A Slight Digression... Pt 2.

After Spook came Tongs.

Daniel "Tongs" Shoesmith.

What I do know about him is that he was a CNC operator in his original life, and apparently quite a good one.
"I've made parts for particle accelerators!" he said to me, the day we picked him up.
"Not much use to us, I'm afraid fella" I replied. "What else can you do?"
"Er... I like metal!?" he offered, a little confused.
"You like metal...okay... What do you know about heat treating and tempering?" I asked.
"Quite a bit." he replied, still confused.

At this point I was getting bored and a little annoyed as he didn't seem to know where I was going with this. It wasn't his fault, I was just feeling arsey that day so I thought I'd get to the point.

I aked him (a little sarcastically) "Can...you...make...weapons?"
"I don't see why not!" he said, a little more cheerfully as the realisation of what I was asking dawned on him.

And- 'boom'- we had our armourer!

Our first stop was to "visit" (I don't like the word "loot") a hardware superstore.
We broke in, slaughtered the dozen-or-so undead Saturday staff and the 3 zeds that had made them that way and got all the bits together that Tongs said we needed to start forging weapons.
(Before we started we put the bodies out the back in a spare store room so at least if anybody came here after we had, they wouldn't have to deal with flies and the stench of rotting meat.)

We didn't know when we'd find somewhere safe enough to start arming ourselves properly and we needed adequate weapons ASAP.
"No time like the present!" said Danny. "We'll move that racking over there, clear a bit of space and start right here!"
He was keen, I'll say that for him.
So we moved the racking, cleared some space and he fired up his new propane burner.

And there we were, in the middle of this fucking huge D.I.Y shop torching and quenching, grinding and sanding these bits of metal that we'd cut off a truck in the loading bay and, to be honest, having a fucking great time!

My machete was the first edged tool Danny had ever made and he did a handsome job of it.

Made from a truck leaf spring, she has a 20" blade, 1/4" thick and 2 1/2" wide from hilt to tip.
Basic and brutal, she's never let me down. The handle is set at a slight angle off parallel and this gives the blade a sort of sawing motion as you strike. It's an excellent and efficient design.

I've named her "Precious"... for personal reasons...

At this point Rampage still had his baseball bat and Spook still had his meat tenderiser but I'm not a fan of blunt trauma weapons (they take too much effort for no guaranteed returns, but take a zed's fucking head off and Bob's your Uncle) so after mine Danny set about making identical machetes for them, himself and Wanker, and in a short space of time we had come up with a basic set of techniques for dealing with our shambling buddies.

It took two days to make five machetes. The car was parked in front of the door we'd smashed to get in and we took it in shifts to lean on the roof of it with Wankers HMR, sniping at anything that looked like it was wanting to pay us some unwelcome attention.
By the end of those two days the area was becoming a little hostile and food supplies were low so we took our newly acquired weapons factory plus a whole bunch of stuff we thought we might need for the fortification of whatever structure we deemed suitable as a long term refuge.

(At this point, I must mention that we'd "borrowed" a caravan recently and it was currently hitched to the back of Wankers 20 year old Volvo.
It slowed us down and negated our ability to even go remotely "off road" but as a travelling store house it more than made up for the hindrance, especially as we weren't planning on being on the road for much longer.)

But this time, as we set off, the atmosphere in the car was a little different to what it had been since the Outbreak.

I felt it, and I knew Wanker, Rampage and Spook felt it.

There seemed to be less despair... more hope... we felt strong and, how can I put it, organised.


Anyway, Danny didn't get the call sign "Tongs" until a little later. And you can thank Gobby for that one.