"You okay?" I asked to Jonathan as I approached him.
"Yeah well, even if I am not, I have to force myself to be okay, do not I? Jonathan responded as he got up on his feet again.
At first I had my worries if he actually had a serious injury because of the alien's kick, but it turned out that it seemed like he only had a slight bruise on his left face. Therefore I turned my attention back to the other various firearms there.
I looked at them more closely, to see that there must have been about more than twenty obsolete firearms there, excluding Jonathan's automatic rifle and my submachine gun. Most of the firearms were handguns, shotguns, and bolt-action rifles. Since most of them also had a wooden finish, I assumed that they might be manufactured back at the days of Vietnam War, Korean War, or even World War 2.
The next thing I did, was to check few of those firearms if they were still working properly. I took one of the handguns and turned on its safety mode. Then, I released its magazine and I continued by pressing its slide to eject the bullet out if there was one loaded in the handgun chamber, and therefore cocking the hammer in the process. There was no bullet that was ejected out from the chamber, so I pulled the trigger and it turned out that the handgun's safety was in fact still in excellent condition, since it did not let out any clicking sound.
The next thing I did, was to turned off its safety mode, and pulled the trigger three times. To my surprise, in all of those three pulls, the handgun let out three clicks, indicating that it was indeed still working perfectly. I then continued on by checking three other handguns by using the same method, and all of them also gave out the same result. The handguns were also of the same model – the original 9mm Browning Hi-Power.
Since I have made sure that there were four working handguns, I decided to take them all back to the base. I told Ryan to open his backpack, and put all of the four handguns inside his backpack together with their loaded magazines. After all of the handguns were already inside his backpack, I continued by looking for additional bullet rounds.
"Here, let me help you." Ryan said while carrying his backpack with him.
There was no ammunition box whatsoever lying on top of any crates, which led me to assume that they were stored inside one of the crates. That was, if those senior officers delivered any in the first place. I then took my fire ax that was lying near the alien's dead body, and used it to try and open each of the crates there and there were seven crates in total, including two that were already opened and excluding the one that the alien crushed earlier.
The first, second, and third crate was only filled with bolt-action rifles. I was starting to have my doubts when Jonathan noticed that one of the remaining two unopened crates was separated from the rest of the other crates, which was placed just beside the storage room door.
"Why was that crate placed separately from the ones over here?" Jonathan asked, while closing the third crate.
"Maybe they got lazy to place it together with the other ones, since that crate could be the last one that they had to move…" Ryan replied, lazily and in fatigue.
"Or rather… probably because it contains ammunitions for the weapons stored in these crates. This museum looked like the type that conducts a live demonstration for everything once in a while, after all…" Jonathan responded as he walked to the crate.
Jonathan then asked me to throw my fire ax to him, to which I did, and I looked at him opening the crate with it before realizing that he did not have his garden fork with him anymore.
"Where is your garden fork?" I asked him.
"Yeah well, I had to use it to shake away a behemoth earlier not too long after we split up. I guess it was worth it after all to pierce it into its head, even though that also means I had to leave it sticking there unless I wanted a clean purple beam shot to hit me." Jonathan responded while opening the crate.
I then realized that the glass breaking sound earlier that distracted the alien approaching us at the communications room was Jonathan's doing. It seemed that the aliens were spreading out to hunt us down earlier just as they entered the museum. One of them might be pursuing Jonathan as well, and he led it to an exhibition room before he ambushed and killed it from behind by piercing through its head with his garden fork.
Apparently, it fell down and hit a display showcase, breaking the case glass in the process as it collapsed. Of course, the noise would attract the other aliens' attention and made them rush to the location, and it left Jonathan with no choice but to get out from the exhibition room quickly, forcing him to leave the garden fork sticking to the alien's head.
It really made me amazed since Jonathan must have a very good sight in darkness that he was able to accurately pierce the alien in the head without missing. It also made me realized that Jonathan told Ryan to go with me since I was the only one who had any form of light source. If he was to go with Jonathan, he could have a serious difficulty in following Jonathan's pace in the dark.
"So it was four aliens that survived the crash, instead of three…" I said.
"The only thing that I am sure for now, is that only the aircraft pilot that died when it crashed and exploded." Jonathan responded, "There could be more than four of them that survived the crash for all we know since we do not know for sure about how many were inside in the first place…"
Just when he finished talking, he finally opened the crate completely. He put my fire ax beside the wall, and looked inside.
"Well… looks like my guess is right after all…" he said.
I approached the crate to see what were inside, and found out that it was filled with several boxes of ammunitions. I glanced through the types of ammunitions, and saw that many .30-06 Springfield, .45 ACP, 9x19mm Parabellum, and 12 gauge cartridge boxes were among them.
When I realized that the .30-06 Springfield ammunition box was there, I headed back to the crates to check again the bolt-action rifles inside them. It turned out that all of the crates contained the M1917 Enfield rifle, with each crate containing four rifles.
"Heh… yeah right, few obsolete firearms they said… More like few models of many obsolete firearms to me…" Jonathan said, with a skeptical tone.
"Then, you were very lucky to get your hands on that BAR, Jon…" I said to him.
"Maybe… good thing this one is the original 1918 too, saves me the trouble of releasing the bipod and the carry handle…" he responded.
I then took my fire ax that was rested on the wall to open the last remaining closed crate. When I finally opened it, I looked inside and it turned out that the crate contained five semi-automatic shotguns of the model Browning Auto-5. I looked again to the other shotguns that were lying on top of the other crates, and I was finally sure that they were also of the same models.
"So… how should we carry these all back to the station again?" Ryan asked in confusion.
"We do not." Jonathan responded, sighing, "But we still can bring the four handguns earlier, together with one shotgun and one rifle here. We should look for the ones that have a sling on it, and carry it with us.
Jonathan then added he would also bring the contents of one .30-06 Springfield cartridge ammunition box with him, and carry one rifle with sling. I responded by saying that I would bring the contents of one 12 gauge and one .45 ACP ammunition box. Ryan said that he would try to fill the backpack with as much 9x19mm cartridge rounds as he could, and carry one shotgun with sling.
Once we have decided what each of us had to bring, Ryan added that back at the locker room, there could be few other backpacks as well inside the lockers that we had yet to open. Knowing that, I decided to head back to the second floor, carrying the M3A1 submachine gun and my fire ax with me. Jonathan also told Ryan to pick a handgun, leave his backpack, and go with me, as he would open each cartridge ammunition boxes while waiting for us to return.
We walked fast, but not to the point that we were running to the direction of the stairs while lighting our surroundings. When we reached the stairs, we could see the lifeless dead alien body, still lying not too far from there, with a pool of black liquid. Not wanting to waste any time, we headed upstairs to the second floor immediately.
When we reached the second floor, Ryan and I searched the rows of lockers one by one. If only we had one more flashlight, we could split up and search them by ourselves. Fortunately, it did not take us too long to find two more backpacks, which were rather larger than the previous one. We then headed back downstairs, passing through the sights of the alien's dead body, before reaching the corridor end, and entered the storage room again.
As we walked inside, the first things that we saw were the already opened cartridge boxes, and Jonathan had just finished filling Ryan's backpack with 9x19mm bullet rounds. Both Ryan and I then filled one of the backpack that we found with 12 gauge and .45 ACP bullet rounds.
It seemed that Jonathan did not only have good sights in darkness, but rather fast hands as well since he managed to fill the other backpack with .30-06 Springfield bullet rounds from two ammunition boxes, and even finished before we did.
"Are you sure you can bring that much rounds in your backpack? You do remember that you will bring another rifle with you, right? I asked Jonathan, with doubts.
"Hey, I do not think that it is a right question to ask to a guy who can carry a BAR one handed with ease." Jonathan replied, as he smiled slightly.
"Oh we have not told you yet, Travis. He did shoot that T-shaped thing down using the anti-tank rifle one handed for the last round." Ryan responded.
The atmosphere was lighted up for a brief time there, thankfully. But shortly after, we had our minds focused again as we readied ourselves to head back to the station, where Captain Quentin and the other three survivors were waiting. As usual before we went to other place, I lighted my watch and saw that the time was already 03.32 p.m. We had spent more time than I had expected. I just hoped that we could make it back to the station before it went dark.