Condition Code

The old man came out of the warehouse pushing a cart stacked with dust-caked ammunition boxes. They landed on the counter with dull, heavy thuds. The wrinkled hands working through the paperwork were slow, but they never once hesitated.

He was punching my firearms license information into an antiquated machine that looked like a typewriter when he suddenly lifted his head and looked at me.

"By the way—don't you need a pistol?"

The question caught me off guard. I asked back, puzzled.

"I was under the impression the law changed. Civilians aren't allowed to carry handguns anymore."

"That's right. But it's different for someone with an RPAL like you. You can't carry one on your person, but possession and transport are legal."

The shop owner tapped the documents with the tip of his pen and went on.

"Long as you keep it locked in a case, stored separately, when you're traveling home or to a range, you're fine. Means you're eligible to buy."

I couldn't read his eyes. A sales pitch to move one more gun, or the unspoken help of a man who recognized one of his own? Maybe both.

"Let me take a look."

At that, the old man rose with a satisfied smile. From the glass display under the counter he lifted pistols with familiar names—Glock, SIG Sauer, Beretta—and laid them out on the mat.

I picked them up in turn, testing the grip, the balance. They were all excellent weapons. None of them spoke to me.

"Do you happen to have a VP9?"

The old man's eyes lit up. With a look that said this one knows his hardware, he drew another black hard case from the deepest recess of the display.

"Heckler und Koch. You know your guns."

The case opened, and a heavy black polymer pistol ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠settled onto the mat.

The old man picked it up with a gloved hand and began laying out its virtues.

"This one's biggest feature is this right here—because of the indicator, I take it?"

He pointed to the rear end of the slide.

"Yes. You need it for Condition Two."

The VP9 was built so that when a round was chambered, a red indicator stood out from the back of the slide—something you could confirm by touch, even in the dark.

"Huh. Carrying it loaded, no safety? Were you an Operator?"

"Well... anyway. I'll take this one."

"Ah, understood. Let me get these sorted first..."

The shop owner cut the lecture short and started clearing the other pistols off the table.

The other reason I'd chosen the VP9 was the lever-style magazine release—fewer fumbles, fewer mistakes—and the fact that you could drop the magazine and send the slide home with your left hand as easily as your right.

Even if you're not left-handed, there will be times you need the left hand.

The shop owner looked ready to close the sale.

"One more thing."

"Go ahead."

"I need about fifty wire-trip devices that take twelve-gauge shells."

In that instant, the merchant's smile vanished from the old man's face completely.

A wire trip was a kind of booby trap built around a single shotgun round. Shotguns, a pistol, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and now perimeter traps. My shopping list had gone well past ordinary self-defense.

He stared at me in silence for a moment, then turned to the shelves behind him and started pulling down small boxes.

Devices of metal and spring, small enough to disappear into a palm and lethal enough to matter, piled up on the counter. Set beside the firearms and the stacks of ammunition, the whole display now looked like a miniature armory dressed for war.

The old man tossed it out half in jest, half in earnest.

"Well, I'm happy to move the inventory, but this fella really looks like he's prepping for a war."

"I just need them for emotional comfort."

The gun shop owner didn't pry any further. He punched numbers into the calculator in silence.

When the last figure was in, the receipt he slid across the counter showed a total, tax included, well in excess of seven thousand dollars.

I slotted my card into the terminal without a flicker of hesitation.

A sum north of eight million won had just become steel, lead, and gunpowder.

The cheerful chime from the terminal rang like a bell dividing the past from the future.

I regretted not having an AR-15-pattern automatic rifle, but legally the only rifles you could buy were semi-autos with the full-auto function stripped out, usable only at a range, and carrying them was prohibited. A semi-automatic that put out one round at a time was little more than a slightly more powerful pistol at close quarters, and it was a hard thing to hide besides.

Once I'd loaded all the heavy gun cases and ammunition boxes into the Sorento, I felt steadier—and, at the same time, a new unease lifting its ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠head.

The cargo filled the trunk and the passenger seat enough to make the Sorento's suspension sag. It was the scrap of the civilized world I'd spent the last ten years accumulating, and, at the same time, the things I'd gathered against the day that world came down.

Is this too much?

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

It was a question I always asked myself, and I already knew the answer. I was pathologically obsessed with preparation, readiness, stockpiling. Sometimes I thought the obsession itself was the hobby.

People used to treat me like a weirdo for it. Well—after I immigrated to Canada, those looks had mostly gone away.

I drove toward the largest bank branch downtown. I parked, then sat a moment and scanned the street. It looked peaceful. I couldn't tell if I was the only one who felt the tension coiled underneath.

I went inside and stood at the ATM. I started pulling as much cash as the card limit and the machine limit would give me.

I fed the card in and punched the PIN again and again, until the screen finally stopped me.

Thick bundles of twenty-dollar bills poured from the machine without pause. When it was done, I was holding more than two thousand dollars in cash.

That's too little. I'll have to come back tomorrow.

As I stuffed the money deep into my bag, old memories flickered past. In the Legion, in the conflict zones, the most reliable currency on earth had always been a clean stack of American bills.

I should get some U.S. dollars ready too.

When systems start to shake, digital numbers can become meaningless scraps of data in a single instant. Of course, cash was no guarantee either.

I tossed the bag of bills under the passenger seat and pointed the Sorento back toward the hideout. The heavy weight of the cash gave me a different kind of calm than the cold reassurance of the guns.

And on the radio, the news of an anxious world kept coming.

Again?

Christ. That neighborhood really can't go a day without shooting.

The thought that I was lucky to live in peaceful Canada lasted only a moment. The news rolled on as casually as if it were coming from the other side of the world.

And then yesterday's volcano story picked up again.

Indefinitely.

The word drove into my mind like a spike. This was no longer a matter of worrying over a return ticket. The sky itself had been shut.

In the in-depth report that followed, the anchor asked an expert how long the total flight ban would last. The panelist offered a grim forecast.

It wasn't too much.

With the grim news as background music, I pulled into the hideout. The moment I stepped out of the Sorento I started transferring the cargo—packed all the way into the passenger seat—into the truck and the trailer.

Once the load was stowed, a job I could no longer put off surfaced in my mind: linking the trailer's CCTV system so I could watch it from the W990's driver's seat. Until now the feeds had only been visible from inside the trailer. From here on, I needed to read the ground around me even while I was rolling.

I pulled out the small monitor and vehicle mount I'd ordered ahead of time from Amazon, found a clever pocket of space on the dash between the seats, and bolted the mount down hard. The drill sang through the cab. I had no hesitation at all about putting holes in a new truck.

I mounted the monitor and ran the cable through the accordion passageway connecting the tractor to the trailer. I didn't forget to fit a separate connector so the whole thing could be uncoupled at any time.

When the work was done I sat in the W990's driver's seat and powered the monitor on. The screen woke, and a mosaic of split images came up at once: six fixed cameras covering the trailer rear and both flanks, fore and aft, plus two PTZ units at the trailer's corners, sweeping the surrounding ground through a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

I moved the joystick. The cameras tracked as smoothly as I wanted them to. A perfect all-around surveillance system.

Looking at the trailer's clean, blank side on the monitor, I thought, I really did the right thing, making those windows barely larger than gun ports.

Tiny windows. From the outside you could hardly see in at all. At first I'd worried it would feel ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠claustrophobic. Now I couldn't imagine a wiser choice.

And I decided to function-check the new guns before the sun went down. I buckled on the tactical belt the shop owner had thrown in as a courtesy and seated the VP9 in the holster. Shotguns in both hands, I walked out to the wide lot and put rounds, in turn, into the steel targets I'd set up the day before.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Crack. Crack-crack. Crack-crack-crack.

The body still remembers.

Then I put the guns where they belonged. The short shotgun—the TAC-14—went under the truck's driver's seat. I practiced racking it one-handed and found it was entirely doable with my left hand still on the wheel. The Remington 870 went into the sleeper locker. The pistol went into the secret drawer beside the trailer bed. And the cash I'd drawn today I hid in the secret compartment in the trailer floor.

Looking back at myself for building a false floor into a trailer when I wasn't even a smuggler, I muttered under my breath.

"Lee Chan. Did you already know this was coming?"

Another long day spent. I pulled a beer from the fridge—and then, unbidden, the thought of cigarettes I'd already quit rose up.

I leaned back into the sofa and switched on the TV. Lakagígar, again.

"...A volcanic winter—no, a newly beginning ice age—is not the end of it."

"I'm sorry. Not the end?"

A subtitle flashed across the screen, almost like a joke.