“Don’t look like nothin’ special, right pup?” William shrugged. “Well, these bullets are very special.”
Billy extracted one bullet from the tightly packed box of rounds and held it up for William’s inspection. What he saw was strange. The round was not a uniform copper color like what he had expected to see from all those action movies. What he saw was more of a base copper color with striations of some other color in it, it looked like silver but kind of muted. William looked at Billy with an eyebrow raised in a questioning glance. Billy smiled and William was sure that the older man was going to go into another laughing fit.
Billy rotated the bullet in the light, making sure to catch it on all of the strange silver striations in the bullet. “This bullet is the best of both worlds, pup. Shit, this here is the magic bullet.”
“Magic bullet?”
Billy did start laughing then, “Shit yes, pup! This bullet and all the ammunition we have here is made with both lead and silver nitrate. Jesus, haven’t you seen any horror movies in the last decade or two?” Billy tossed the bullet in the air and caught it between his fingers.
“Yeah, I remember seeing bullets that had UV irradiated liquid that burned vampires on contact. I saw a guy kidnap people, put them in elaborate traps and if the person made it out alive they had a new found respect for life and the mental problem they had before that was gone. I’ve seen a creepy little girl that killed people because they watched a stupid Avant Gard movie. I’ve even seen a few people get trapped in some crazy mouse trap like house that just so happened to be a prison for thirteen dead people that for some reason wanted to kill the people that were trapped in the house. Now, Billy? Did I miss anything?”
Billy spit on the floor. He was chewing the inside of his lip. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I’ve seen some of those things too. I even tried to do the whole irradiated liquid thing. The only problem with that was the casing for the liquid. It had to be somewhat fragile so it would break on impact, the problem with that was it usually shattered inside the barrel of the gun, or the casing didn’t break on impact, and it was like shooting with a regular bullet. Not only that, the liquid only held the radiation for about, oh five minutes or so, which made them pretty much useless. I wasted almost a whole year trying to get that shit to work, never did.” Billy grinned up at the taller man. “Besides the things flew like one winged, wooden leg ducks anyhow, whether the casing broke or not.”
William turned his attention back to the bullet in Billy’s hand. “So, what makes this round so special?”
Billy held up the bullet once more. “Well, we shape shifters, as werewolves, are susceptible to silver; the good thing is so is most of the things that want to kill us. So, I started by trying to make all silver bullets. The only problem with those was the ballistics of silver. Silver is a much harder metal than lead, so already you’re looking at a serious accuracy problem at any kind of range.” Billy held up his hands. “Here, let me show you.” Billy ran back around the counter that he had leaned over just a moment ago to fish out the strange bullet that he had shown William.
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William watched as Billy placed a gun and two bullets on the counter. William walked over and watched the gunsmith’s demonstration.
“Now, let’s say that this here is a normal 9mm pistol. It ain’t, but let’s just pretend.” Billy motioned to the handgun and moved a bullet a certain distance away from the muzzle illustrating, he supposed, the flight path of said round when it was shot from the gun. “Now this is about the accuracy range for a normal lead 9mm round, about twenty-five to fifty meters, right?” William nodded his head. “Now, do you know why this bullet is accurate at all?” William blinked once and shook his head. “It’s accurate” Billy said, “because of the rifling inside the barrel of the gun.”
Billy reached under the counter again and pulled out a hollow tube of metal. William took it and looked through the metal like a kid looking through a paper towel roll pretending it was a telescope. He had no idea what he was looking for.
Billy helped him out. “Now, if you look on the sides, pup you’ll see some grooves along the inside of the tube.” William looked and just barely visible he could see some lines spiraling down the length of the tube. He nodded in understanding. “Now that is called rifling. All modern guns and rifles have it. Have had it in fact, since some genius figured out that those grooves could make a musket ball fly farther and straighter by making the bullet spin.” Billy took the tube from William and replaced it under the counter.
Billy stood up and moved the other bullet about two thirds as far away from the gun as the first bullet. “Now, this bullet would be a solid silver bullet.” He pointed out the length being shorter than the bullet before. “Now why do you suppose that the silver bullet doesn’t fly as far as the lead bullet?” Billy asked with both eyebrows raised.
William shook himself as he brought himself back to the present. He had been thinking about muskets and old battlefields. Acres of dead grass, the air filled with the smell of gun powder and the screams from men who had had limbs torn off by softball musket shells. “I’m sorry, you were saying?” William tried to shake off the image of a man hopping around on one leg holding his severed arm in his only good hand.
Billy spat on the floor once more. “Shit, pup you aint interested in this crap.” Billy began to clear away the various items from the counter.
William reached out and grabbed Billy’s arm. “Yes, I am. I’m sorry, you were saying about silver not flying as far as a regular bullet?”
Billy looked sideways at William with a dubious look, as if he was trying to see if this little show and tell wasn’t just a waist of both of their time. After a moment Billy heaved a sigh. “Like I was saying before, silver is a harder metal than lead. The rifling on the inside of the barrels don’t affect silver like it do lead rounds, so the silver bullet aint spinning when it comes out of the barrel of the gun. Without that spin the bullet don’t fly as accurately, so the effective range is decreased.” Billy waved his hand in the air. “This is all a moot point though.” Billy looked around and leaned closer to William. William leaned forward a few inches as well. “What really makes silver so much less desirable than lead” Billy said, “is that the metal is so hard it doesn’t do any damage except where the thing is pointed.”