Chapter 4
MARCH 3, EVENING
THAT EVENING, MATT, TIM, PERRY, Linda, Scott, Roman, Sarah, and Adrian were seated around the kitchen table.
Linda gently chided her son, “Scott, please slow down. I know it’s a lot better than my cooking, but show some respect and don’t shovel it in like that.” Turning to Adrian, who was smiling at Scott in male camaraderie to help ease the boy’s embarrassment, she asked, “Adrian, I heard a lot of wild stories about you over the past year—what’s the true story?”
Adrian replied, “I left here after my wife died and headed for the mountains in Colorado. I took it on myself to live a stone age life, to keep my mind occupied as a distraction from grieving. That’s a hard row to hoe, but it helped. Say, Roman, I forgot to ask—did those people from Palo Duro Canyon show up?”
“Sure did—nice folks. They’re turning into good farmers. That redheaded boy is one hell of a hunter, too. Glad you sent them to us.”
Adrian looked back at Linda. “When I got into the mountains, I got cross-ways with a group of cannibals. They ticked me off some, so I decided to take them to school. I went to war with them, stone age style. That lasted for quite a while, with me slowly picking them off. But then they took hostages from a nearby village, so my war with them ended at that point. I went to the village and they were just about to launch a frontal attack on the cannibals.”
Adrian paused to take a drink of water. “
The villagers would have gotten the hostages killed and lost most of their men, the way they were going about it. They asked me to lead them since they knew I’d already been fighting the cannibals and had military experience. Actually, I went there to ask them to help me, so it was a mutual thing. We finished the cannibals off in less than two days, but their leader got away. He was a vicious animal, called himself Wolfgang. Me and another fella went after him and got him a bit later.”
Linda asked, “How many of them were there?”
“About eighty or so.”
“And you actually took them all on single-handed?”
“Yeah, well, I got a little cranky, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Having recently lost Alice and all, I wasn’t exactly in my right mind. I’m not too proud of most of what I did to them, but on the other hand, they definitely had it coming.”
Linda asked, “What about those scars and the story of sleeping with a grizzly bear?”
Adrian blushed just a bit; Linda liked that. Adrian said, “Not long after I got into the mountains, but before the war started, I came face to face with a grizzly bear. We had a fight and he clawed me a couple of times—that’s where the scars come from. I finally got my spear into him and finished it. That meat fed me most of the winter.”
Adrian pushed his chair back a little while Linda took a sip of water.
“During the war, I was grazed on the head by a bullet and got a bad concussion. The cannibals were hot on my trail and I was woozy, and getting worse by the minute. It was a dicey situation. I found a hole under a mat of tree roots that was out of sight. I crawled into it to hide and passed out. When I came to several days later, I was laying with my head against the rear end of a hibernating grizzly sow. I guess the smell of the bear grease I had rubbed on me earlier to avoid sunburn plus my bear robe’s smell must have disguised my human odor enough to not awaken her. When I came to, I got out of there real fast, believe me.
“Later in the spring when we were chasing Wolfgang, we came across her and her cubs in the woods. She seemed to recognize me and left us alone, so I stupidly blurted out to my partner that that was the bear I had slept with. People being starved for good stories as they are, that one travelled fast. Too damn fast and too damn far—excuse my language, Scott. You know, it was the first thing Roman asked me about.”
Linda replied while laughing, “Well, you’ve provided plenty of entertainment for a lot of people, nationwide. That’s not a bad thing, you know. It’s made you famous, too.”
Adrian replied, “Yeah, but I don’t much care to be famous for that.”
Matt said, “You may not like it, but everyone else loves it!”
Tim and Perry laughed at Adrian’s obvious discomfiture.
Adrian asked Linda, “What’s your story? Roman tells me you probably know more about these raiders than anyone here.”
Linda sighed and put her fork down. It was apparent that she did not like to talk about this, but with a serious expression, she replied, “A few weeks before the solar storm, Jeff, my husband, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. With modern medicine’s finest efforts, there was a reasonable chance of him surviving it, but when the grid dropped, it was just a matter of time. After the grid collapsed, we moved out into the pine forest. We had a little place there that we’d planned to retire to and visited most weekends. We scraped by, like most folks, but Jeff got so weak that he couldn’t help. He passed away a few weeks later. Scott and I stayed, and we were able to hunt enough to eat and had water nearby, had a good start on a garden. Scott is a great hunter, far better than you would expect from an eight-year-old. We would have eked out a living.”
She paused for a long moment, looking lost in painful memories. Then she slowly continued.
“But then the raiders came. Some people who were fleeing ahead of them warned us, so we hid out and waited, hoping they would pass by. We were told they string out in a long thin line, living off whatever they can loot. Five men found our home, took everything we had left—which wasn’t much—then burned the house down. They were just pure evil. They moved on; they could have left the house and we could have returned, but they burned us out, and destroyed the garden to boot. We slipped past them that night and kept going. We stayed ahead of them by moving pretty fast. They stopped a lot to steal and eat. I had hoped to eventually find a place far from them and start over, maybe finding an abandoned house in a good spot. It was a long, hard journey. We camped without fire, got soaked whenever it rained or we had to cross a creek or river, and caught what food we could on the run. It was the worst time in my life I can remember, aside from Jeff’s death. We arrived here by accident, hadn’t heard of it. We were quickly welcomed when Roman found out I was a farmer, so we stayed. It’s a wonderful place and the people are so kind, but as luck would have it, the raiders now seem to be headed this way.”
Roman jumped in, “Linda has a degree in agriculture. She looks at a field and sees soil chemistry, erosion patterns, crop rotations—things like that. Her family were farmers, so she has both backgrounds: real-life farming experience and a college degree. She’s valuable to the village.”
Scott had finished eating and asked to be excused. He left the table and Bear followed him. They went to play in the den.
Tim said, “The boy and that puppy sure have taken to each other. There’s something about young boys and puppies that attract each other; must be that they’re both in that playful stage of life.”
Adrian said, “It’s unusual—that wolf pup hasn’t shown an inclination to stay near anyone except me since I found him. Linda, please remind Scott that Bear is a wild animal, not a domestic pet. If he plays too roughly with Bear, his natural instincts might flare up and Scott could get bitten pretty hard.”
Linda replied, “I’ve already told him, and he listens a lot more than you would think. If he gets bitten, it’ll be a lesson he won’t forget. He’s a resourceful boy, bright and quick. He’ll be okay.”
Roman stood up, groaning from a full stomach. “Let’s all go into the living room and talk. I’ve got some reserve whisky for you guys to try out.”
Linda replied, “You men go ahead; I’m going to help Sarah and get in some girl talk.”
Roman lit two lanterns, then retrieved a whisky bottle and passed it to Matt. “I’ve been aging this batch for a bit over a year, and it’s good—some of my best yet.”
Matt poured two fingers’ worth into his glass and passed the bottle. After each had poured their own, Roman raised his glass in a toast. “Here’s to good friends and good men, present and past.” Each man raised his glass in salute and took a sip.
Perry said, “Damn, Roman, this is fantastic. How do you make it taste so good in such a short time?”
“Trade secret. But here’s a hint: chipped wood. You’re on your own from there, but that’s a big hint. Adrian, these are the best three men I know. Between them, they more range of knowledge, experience, and downright contrariness than any three people on this planet. We’re damn lucky to have them here. I wanted you to get to know them, because it is my firm belief that they will be of great value in this coming war with the raiders. They are resources you need to take full advantage of.
“Perry, as I already told you, is an attorney, and has more wiles and ways than you can imagine. Just ask anyone who has gone up against him in a courtroom. He never thinks inside the box—that would be too mundane for him. When you want to analyze someone else’s moves, he’s your man. His critical thinking skills are unparalleled. When you want to figure out how to outfox an opponent, he’s the man to talk to.
“Matt you already know pretty well. What you may not know is that not only is he the village minister, blacksmith, inventor, and barber, but he has an analytical mind that can pick apart any problem, play with the pieces, and reassemble it the way it was or in whatever other form you might want. When you have to face a challenge of any kind that needs to be overcome, talk to him. He’ll figure out the best approach and, if need be, build the apparatus to do it with. Matt was an engineer in the past.
“Tim was an engineer, too, and has extraordinary analytical skills. Tim has a way of cutting through the bullshit and getting right to the heart of a problem and then finding the simplest way to fix it. He has combat experience from Vietnam and he’s a sniper extraordinaire. His combat experience plus his sniper skills are of inestimable value to us.”
Adrian said, “So what do you guys make of this raider gang coming at us?”
Matt replied first. “Our information is sketchy, only what we’ve gotten from some refugees. We need more and better-detailed information. But from what we know right now, we have a serious problem. Either we take them on out in the field, or we wait and fight defensively. I’ve thought about making some pretty good anti-personnel cannons from pipe. Large muzzleloaders, so to speak. Load them with short sections of chain and fire into the raiders. They’ll be effective, but limited in range and the number of times we could fire. They are slow to load, so instead, we would have to make a lot of them and make them portable enough that we could move them to where they are most needed at the last moment. When fully loaded, these cannons will weigh around a hundred pounds loaded. We could also make claymores and ground mines, but those might take more time than we have.”
Perry said, “Matt’s right, you know. We first have to determine whether our resources and abilities are better suited to offensive or defensive tactics. The two are worlds apart. That decision has to be made very soon in order for us to get prepared. If we wait too long to decide, then we’ve put ourselves into a no-win situation. Either way we go requires preparation and training and an organizational setup. One of the major problems we have is that we don’t know how long we have to get ready, and preparation, training, and creating an organizational structure all take time. We have to decide on offense or defense and we have to do it fast; there won’t be time to change strategy, and we can’t do both and do them well.”
Jim stood up and walked around the room while he spoke. “It’s simple, guys. We have to attack them in the field as soon and as far away as possible while we take whatever defensive measures we can. It won’t be f*cking rocket science fighting them out there; it will be who shoots the best and has the most determination to win. We need to get every available man, do rudimentary training, and then go out there and just f*cking kill the sorry bastards. We need to do simple training—nothing complicated. Make sure everyone can shoot straight, practice cover and advance technique, and set up communications. Communications among the men is a prime necessity, and has to be fast and accurate.
Runners are the best way to do that. We don’t have enough field radios and we won’t really need them; the battlefield will be compact, given the numbers we’re talking about here. Let’s keep it as simple as we can and get moving fast.”
Roman said, “Adrian, my suggestion is that we call the village together tomorrow. I’ll start the process tonight to gather them tomorrow. What I’ll do is introduce them to you and have them vote on whether or not they will follow you into battle or not. I’m sure they will; they’ve all heard the stories that came out of Colorado about how you organized and led that village into battle with only a few hours to prepare. Many of them remember the Mad Jack battle. I’ll also explain your military background and the need for quick organization and training. I’m assuming that you are willing to take on a leadership role, of course. Are you?”
Adrian looked at each man for a few seconds before replying. “I’m willing if you four think I’m the right person for it. You know the village men and their capabilities better than I do. If you’re sure there isn’t a better candidate, then I’ll do it. If there is a better candidate—and personally, I believe I am looking at four better candidates—then I’ll follow him.”
Perry replied, “My opinion is that you are the best man for the job. There are two reasons. First is that you are much younger and far more physically fit than any of us, and this job is going to require long, hard work with little sleep. You have the advantage over us there. Second—and maybe more importantly—you have recently led men into battle in a somewhat similar situation, and the villagers know it. Your adventures have afforded you a certain charisma and people already want to follow you. Their being willing to follow is of paramount importance in their motivation to fight.”
Adrian replied, “All right, then, let’s see what the villagers say tomorrow.”
Sarah and Linda cleared the table and were washing the dishes after the men had gone into the living room.
Linda said, “That was the best meal I’ve eaten since before the grid collapsed. Fried chicken is one of my favorites, and you cooked it perfectly. I want to thank you again for inviting us.”
Sarah replied, “Think nothing of it, it’s my treat to have you here. I can’t remember the last time I had the pleasure of the company of another woman in the kitchen—not since Alice died, anyway. You’re welcome anytime, no need to wait for an invitation. Just come on over whenever you feel like it, and if you time it to be here for dinner, so much the better.”
Linda asked, “What happened to Alice? If that isn’t too personal of a question.”
Sarah gave Linda a knowing look and Linda’s face turned pink. Sarah smiled at that and said, “Not at all, honey. Alice was a great friend, and, as you know, Adrian’s wife. She was a doctor—a surgeon, actually. She and Jennifer and the nurses set up a hospital here. One day when she was working alone, a man with the plague showed up and asked for help. Alice immediately quarantined the hospital. Wouldn’t allow anyone to come near, especially Adrian. She was a bit over three months pregnant at the time, but Adrian didn’t know—she was waiting to surprise him. She told me, but made me promise to keep it a secret until after she told Adrian.
“Adrian sat outside the hospital, as close as Alice would let him—which wasn’t close at all—until she died. They talked a lot across the distance between them, but she never told him she was pregnant. It was too late to tell him then; if she had, he would have come into the hospital no matter what and died with her, and she knew it. She had to threaten to kill herself if he tried to come closer, as it was. After she passed away, he burned the hospital down with her in it. Those were her instructions to get rid of the plague virus. When the ashes cooled, Adrian went in to get what was left of her for burial. Some ceiling and insulation had fallen across her stomach during the fire. Adrian found some tiny cartilage fragments that hadn’t completely burned and figured out that she had been pregnant. Adrian loved Alice something fierce, and they had only been married a year, still in the honeymoon stage. He went a little insane and left only minutes after the funeral was over. But he seems to be over the craziness now. He’s still carrying a lot of hurt, though—a whole lot of hurt.”
Linda said, “Poor man. Hard enough to lose your wife, but to lose a child you didn’t know you were going to have—that’s beyond painful. I don’t wonder he went a little crazy. When I lost Jeff, I had time to see it coming, and Scott to go on for. It was damned hard and painful. I can only imagine what he felt.”
Sarah replied, “I know. That whole ‘stone age living’ thing shows how bad it was. That kind of desperation breaks my heart to think about. I loved Alice; she was a wonderful person. She died bravely, and well. That’s about the best thing I can say about the situation. They would have had such a wonderful life together.” Sarah’s eyes had gone watery.
Linda said, “Here now, let me finish these dishes, you sit down and talk to me while I do it.” She gave Sarah a hug.
The men in the living room had stopped talking for a few moments to consider all that had been said and what lay before them.
Scott asked Adrian, “Where did you find Bear, sir?”
Adrian replied, “I found him on my way home from the mountains. I was riding along and spotted a dead wolf, and Bear was sitting beside her. It looked like he had been there several days and was starving to death. I couldn’t just leave him there, not with him being that loyal to his mother. So I decided to raise him up enough to be able to take care of himself and then let him decide what to do—go back to being wild or stay with me.”
Scott asked, “He just let you pick him up?”
“Oh no. He put up a ferocious fight. Bit me several times. But I finally got hold of him and carried him across the saddle. I gave him some water and some meat. He bit me every time I moved him for the first couple of days, then settled for growling at me. Much as I hated to do it, I had to tie him up at night so he wouldn’t wander off while I slept. Every morning, he would fight me all over again. Eventually he quit fighting me—mostly because of the food and water, I guess. He’s growing fast, getting more food than he normally would in the wild. He eats all the time, eats like he’s never had food before. He’s smart, too. I haven’t tried to train him, but he watches and listens and learns fast. It’s only been a little while since I quit tying him up. I expect to find him gone some morning, but so far, he’s sticking around.”