Samuel was a practical man. His friends - well, okay, just George, he didn’t have many
friends - thought he was a bit nuts, but he knew that when the commies let the bomb fly,
he’d be the only one still laughing. George had tried many a time to explain that there
were no more commies in Russia, and that the Vietnamese and Chinese were no real threat.

“Sam, the Russkies ain’t communist no more. They gone democratic, just like us.”

“Ha! Them commie bastards will try just about anything to win, even pertend to dissolve
they own government. You lissen to me, son, and don’t trust them Russkies.” George
invariably gave up on these arguments, partially because Samuel was older and George
respected the elderly. Mostly, though, it was because Sam let George fire any gun from
Sam’s huge collection. No survivalist would try and get by with only a few guns, and Sam
was quite the survivor.

One fine spring day, George was preparing to undertake his second favorite activity: sleeping!
He’d had a hard day at the mill, and he had no wife or kids to keep him awake, so there he was,
sacked out on his bed. The light bulb above him was drawing considerable attention, much more
than he normally paid to it. You see, it was on, and he wanted it off. The whole light switch
idea shied away from his sleep-stupefied brain like a politician from a straight answer. He was
about to solve the whole problem by rolling over when the door to his room banged open and Samuel
pulled off his greatest Kramer impersonation of an entrance ever.

“Boy, this is no time to be nappin’! The commies’re loose and they’re an Armani-clad whirlwind of destruction!”

“The who and the what now?” stuttered a weary George.

“I toldja, the commies’re loose! They done busted out and got their slimy Gucci-clad mitts on some’a my guns!”

“Busted outta what, Sam?” asked a more awake George. Sam responded with a slightly sheepish look.

“Well, y’see, a decade or so ago I caught some honest to God commies snooping around in my bunker.
I din’t wanna risk a fight with them, so’s I just slammed the door on my bunker and locked it.”
After that little history lesson, George was fully awake.

“Waitasecond now, Sam. Gucci? Armani? And you say this all happened ten years ago? Didn’t the
Guernsey family, that rich couple outta New York, disappear ten years ago? I think you mighta got
them instead!”

“Socialite, socialist, I was close. Yuppies is just wannabe commies, anyway,” replied a spitting
Sam, “all them ferned cafes with their little spinach quiches in New York is like a breedin’ ground
for Communism.”

“Well, I reckon a decade in a bunker living off canned food would drive anybody to mass-murder.
We should probably go restrain ‘em or something,” George said as he grabbed his hat.

Meanwhile, in the woods, a fashionably gloved hand pumped a shotgun, and a stylishly dressed
figure holstered a .44 magnum.

George adjusted his hat as he gazed out over the terrain. The shotgun’s barrel felt cold today,
unusually cold, which seemed to reflect the chill George felt when he considered what he and Sam
were hunting: a potentially crazy, armed couple from New York. Sam seemed noticeably more calm
and even a little excited at the idea of hunting commies. George gave his gun a nervous ch-chk.

His pump was answered by an echoed ch-chk…but not from Samuel. Sam was dead. Killed by the blast
that quickly followed the second pumping. George’s last thoughts were, “Body armor may have been
a good investment,” before the bullet from a .44 magnum penetrated his body, flipping him bodily
over and depositing him face down in the mud, facing the opposite direction.

Relief filled Clyde Guernsey’s mind. “Elyse!” he yelled out, “We’ve finally escaped from the psycho
and his cronies! We can go back to New York with little Jochen and rejoin the socialite scene!”

“Darling!” enthused Elyse as she dove into his arms. The two, linked arm in arm with little Jochen
in tow, a shotgun over one shoulder and a .44 holstered, strode away into a maroon sunset, leaving
the weakly bleeding bodies of Samuel and George in the mud, with only a few pathetic blades of grass
to keep them company in death.