Fort Save-Co - Chapter 2

Robert paged through the forms, removing all the requisitions, whether open or closed, for M16A2 rifles. There were eighteen from the last year, as far back as he kept records before having to recycle the parchment forms.

He took the eighteen sheets of parchment, and sorted them as he walked around the desk and towards the weapon's locker. By the time he arrived he had sorted the eighteen forms into open and closed requisitions, nine of the former, and nine of the latter. He unlocked the locker and stepped pass the crates of ammunition to the weapon's racks.

His eyes swept past the pistols and crossbows and settled on the rifle racks. They were wooden, like everything in the warehouse, and contained a variety of weapons. He kneeled down, so as to not look at the hunting rifles, and focused on the twenty slots he had cut over a decade ago for the M16A2 rifles. There were ten rifles there, which meant he hadn't miscounted earlier.

He looked through the open requisitions and matched the serial numbers to the matching empty slots, then matched the closed requisitions and matched the serial numbers to the matching rifles. There was one rifle remaining, when there should have been two. He checked the serial number of the missing rifle and noted it on his worksheet.

"Okay, so, someone took a rifle without requisitioning it," he said to himself as he removed the tenth rifle, the one that hadn't been requisitioned during the previous year. He then slung it over his shoulder and picked up the forms as he stood up.

He turned and grabbed a magazine of rounds before locking the weapon's locker behind him.

He stopped, shook his head, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and strode over to his desk. He opened the drawer, and removed one of the yellowed, yet still usable, requisition forms. He took out a pen, something that the council hadn’t begun to ration, yet, and quickly wrote up his recent transaction.

“Purpose?” he asked himself as he got to the final line of the form. He smirked to himself and began to write, “Reacquisition of lost supplies.”