Adrian's War Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  ADRIAN’S WAY

  by Lloyd Tackitt

  Copyright © 2012 by Lloyd Tackitt. All rights reserved.

  First Kindle Edition: August 2012

  Editor: Everything Indie

  Cover Design: Streetlight Graphics.

  LICENSE NOTES

  All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DISCLAIMER

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are a work of fiction or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN-13: 978-1478297703

  ISBN-10: 1478297700

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my father, William Nathan Tackitt. He is a veteran of three wars; WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. A quiet man with immense dignity and modesty. A true life hero, and gentleman, in every sense of the words.

  Foreword

  AS IN THE FIRST NOVEL in this series “A Distant Eden” this is a hybrid between how-to and fiction. It contains information on survival techniques for primitive survival situations. Techniques that are useful when you have nothing man-made at hand to work with. They are not described in detail, but are easy to research on the internet. Those techniques are found primarily in the first half of the book.

  The second half of the book contains information on fighting raiders, based on classic guerrilla tactics. In a post-apocalyptic world raiders will be a fact of life. Historically they have nearly always been a fact of life from the time agriculture was developed. Every survival situation will have its own unique set of circumstances; they won’t be identical to the story you read here. The specific methods you would have to use may be different given your situation, but the overall guerilla style of resistance is the same. You will gain insight into how to resist if necessary.

  The fictional story line is intended to show how, when, and where the techniques could be applied. It has been demonstrated that learning from an entertaining story line is better retained in memory. This is reinforced by the additional effort of doing one’s own research. The internet makes that research easy. Combined, the story with research, your chances of being mentally prepared are improved significantly.

  Prelude

  Winter, 2015

  ADRIAN THRUST THE SPEAR INTO the bear’s open mouth, cutting its tongue badly. The bear roared and flung its head from side to side at the stinging pain, then charged again, furiously snapping its jaws like huge steel traps, and swinging at him with long, sharp claws. Adrian backed up carefully, ducking and dodging, continually stabbing the spear at the bear’s nose and face.

  He had been startled to find a grizzly bear in these mountains this time of year; most bears were in hibernation. The bear had looked at Adrian as though he were food, and Adrian had instantly seen the bear as a life or death challenge. They both refused to back down from this fight to the death. Almost on first sight, they charged at each other. Adrian was armed with a flint-tipped spear. It was a tiny weapon against the two thousand pound bear, but Adrian wasn’t concerned with losing. If he lost, he lost. That was all there was to it. He’d had no intention of losing, but was well aware that he could.

  Adrian felt the back of his thighs press against a large fallen log. He was pinned. He couldn’t back up any farther without taking the time to climb over the log, and that would be all the opening the bear needed to finish Adrian off.

  Late Summer, 2014

  Alice said, “Happy anniversary Adrian!”

  “Happy anniversary to you, baby. It’s been a great year, the best in my entire life. But I bet it’s not as good as next year. Hey, I have a present for you.”

  Adrian went outside and returned after a moment carrying a basket. As he handed it to her, he said, “Made this for you. Worked on it whenever you were at the hospital so it’d be a surprise.”

  “It’s gorgeous! You made this? Where in the world did you learn to make such intricate patterns?” Alice said, looking it over admiringly.

  In the hospital recovering from a car wreck when I was a kid. They had a basket weaving class. They told me I was a natural.”

  “It’s fantastic! She gave him a kiss. I made you something too. Worked on it in when we didn’t have patients.” Alice disappeared into the bedroom and rummaged in the back of a closet. She emerged with a wrapped package. Adrian unwrapped it and held up a pair of moccasin boots made from soft pigskin.

  “Too cool! I love these! Well made, and they look good, too.” Adrian untied his hiking boots and removed them, then pulled on the new boots; their tops came nearly to his knees. “Perfect fit.” He walked around the living room in them. “Feels great! Just the ticket for hunting. I’ll be able to feel small twigs under my feet before stepping down and making a noise. They’ll be great for running too. Wonderful.”

  Adrian playfully walked up to Alice as though he was stalking a deer, then gave her a big hug and a long kiss. “Thanks baby. These are great. I’ll break them in today when I go hunting.”

  “I have to leave for the hospital or I’ll be late relieving Rebecca. But I have one more present for you.” She dug into her pocket and handed Adrian a harmonica. “Sarah told me that you used to play when you were a kid. She said you were a fantastic player, had a natural gift. It used to break her heart, hearing you play late at night when you were sad, but she hasn’t heard you play in years. I set a broken arm in exchange for this. I would love to hear you play sometime, so practice up. Love you, gotta go.”

  Adrian leaned in the door opening, his six-foot four-inch frame nearly filling it, and watched Alice walk towards the field hospital, the old familiar feel of the harmonica in his hand. He hadn’t played in years, not since going into the army, but he knew he wouldn’t need much practice.

  As he admired her form, and the sensual way she moved, he thought,
“She even walks with a southern accent.” He reflected on the past year. It had been a good year, all things considered. It was preceded, however, by a ghastly year; after a coronal mass ejection larger than the Carrington event had destroyed the world’s power grids.

  First and second world countries had become too dependent on a lifestyle powered by a complicated electrical grid system that was vulnerable to large solar ejections. This weakness had been known for years; congressional hearings had been held to discuss the matter, but almost nothing was done to harden the grid against this known threat. Instead, the operators intended to rely on having enough advance warning to shut down and disconnect the massive transformers. But the CME that knocked the grid out two years previously came too swiftly for that to happen. Most of the huge transformers blew up, transformers that at best would take three years to replace. But with no electric power to make more of them, they proved to be irreplaceable. It was a chicken and egg problem: transformers were needed to supply power to make transformers. There was no power. The grid was down, permanently.

  When the power went off, the pumping of water and fuel stopped. Riots quickly broke out in the streets when people realized that there would never again be food delivered to the grocery stores. Within weeks, the old and very young and those dependent on modern medicines had died. Starving people by the millions left the cities in search of food in the countryside. Mass starvation took hold as the scarce resources in rural areas were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of urban emigrants, and their meager food stores were rapidly depleted. Small and large game were either killed or fled in front of the waves of the walking starved. Livestock hadn’t stood a chance.

  Each city rapidly became surrounded by miles of country devoid of any living thing, including edible insects. Human bodies were scattered everywhere. The magnetic storm came in December, and people in the north died by the millions from exposure to the cold before they could starve. For months the stench of human decay filled the air, even miles away from the multitude of bodies. Cannibalism became rampant. It took a year for the population to stabilize at three percent of what it had been before the CME. Only around 18 million people inhabited America. Suicide, especially murder-suicides involving entire families, had become common as millions decided quick death was preferable to inevitable starvation and watching loved ones die day-by-day. It was a horrendous ending, but one often selected as better than the alternatives.

  Adrian’s uncle, Roman, was a prepper before the solar storm. He had built his home in a remote location an hour and a half commute south of Fort Worth, on the bank of the Brazos River. There he stockpiled food supplies; antique tools, survival books, and anything else that he thought might someday be of use. Adrian and five of his platoon mates had been provisionally discharged from the army, along with most of the armed forces, because the military could no longer feed them. He and his buddies had walked to Roman’s home and joined up with Roman, Sarah, and their children and grandchildren. There they had started to rebuild a life of sorts by hunting, fishing, and eventually farming.

  Along the way, Adrian had stopped at a hospital in Waco to gather medical tools and equipment that might be useful. There he found Alice, along with another doctor and six nurses, hiding on the upper floor. They were near starvation and asked to be taken along. At first Adrian had refused, but Alice strenuously explained that she and the other women were trained medical professionals with valuable skills. Adrian, admiring her spirit and her logic, relented. He knew it was one of the best decisions he had ever made.

  Shortly after arriving at Roman’s, a hostile survival group had discovered Adrian and his companions. They would have taken them as slave laborers, to be worked to death. Adrian assembled a combat operation that wiped out the threat before it could fulminate. They stabilized the area and created a system of trade with others in the area. Alice and her team set up a field hospital that quickly became a magnet for anyone in the area needing medical help. This became the center of civilization for many miles around, and Roman’s small, ragtag family quickly grew into a village locally known as Fort Brazos.

  With time, a lot of hard, backbreaking work and no shortage of luck, they established small farms and key “industries”: a blacksmith, a cobbler, a distillery, a trading post, tobacco operations, candle making, and a tannery. Matthew, the community’s blacksmith and preacher, had perfected a portable wood gas generator that could run power generators and most gasoline or natural gas-fueled internal combustion engines. The hospital utilized more electrical power than any of the industries, and had several generators ready to be fired up as needed. Matthew adapted tractors and trucks to run on wood gas by mounting the gas generators directly onto them. The trucks could cover long distances and haul loads, stopping occasionally to put more wood into the burner. They were useful for going into the deserted cities on scavenging trips. Tractors were run the same way, allowing increased farm productivity to the point that they were now generating a modest surplus of food to use in trade.

  Adrian and his former army buddies dabbled a bit at farming, keeping small plots going for their own use, but their primary responsibilities were security and hunting. They were all trained and efficient former special operations soldiers. They had been selected by the military for the specialized assignments in part because they had no immediate families. They routinely scouted in wide circles around their extended area, traveling for days and sometimes weeks at a time, looking for security threats, meeting and mixing with other small villages and tribes; spreading the word about the hospital and trading post. These trips were combined with hunting when they were returning, bringing in much needed and welcomed meat. Livestock rearing at Fort Brazos was an ongoing process, but it takes time to build herds. It would take a few more years before harvesting a surplus could happen.

  When Alice was out of sight, Adrian retrieved his rifle and walked into the woods still wearing his new moccasin boots. He wasn’t going far today; hunting was on the agenda, not scouting. Deer were scarce. There hadn’t been large populations of them in the area before the grid went down, and the ones that had been there were nearly wiped out or else had fled. It would take years before their population fully recovered. Feral hogs, on the other hand, were abundant. The hog population in Texas before the CME had been huge, and almost doubled on an annual basis. They too had taken a population hit, but not nearly as extreme as the deer because hogs were equipped to fight back against encroachment.

  Deer will only produce up to two fawns per year, but hogs could produce as many as twenty, and those twenty would be breeding within their first year of life. Within the first year after the collapse the hogs had already recovered their previous numbers and were rapidly expanding again. They out-competed deer for food, further restraining the deer population’s recovery. As Roman put it, “The hogs are to us what the buffalo were to the plains Indians.” And it was true. The survival of Fort Brazos had been largely dependent on the growing hog population.

  Hogs, like all animals, are creatures of habit. Adrian had long learned their habits and knew where and when to look for them. Hogs were easier to hunt than deer, which ran at the first inkling of danger. Hogs often turned and attacked instead. Hogs were smart, vicious, and deadly fighters, but they had little chance against a skilled shooter.

  Roman had abandoned his home on the riverbank because the river was no longer flood controlled. The upstream dam gates would never work again and soon the river would be wild and prone to periodic flooding. He knew his home would be underwater at some point. He had moved to a farmstead that had been constructed in the late 1800’s. The most recent owners had been killed by looters soon after the grid dropped. The farm was originally built when Indian attacks were a threat; the buildings were arranged to be easily defended, made of thick, bullet-stopping cedar logs. It was not far from the flood line of the river below, making fresh water easily accessible.

  Adrian brought home a large hog that evening, dragging it on a quickl
y made travois. By the time Alice came home from her shift at the hospital, he had butchered the hog and taken it into the smoke house where it would hang for several weeks being smoke cured. While he was cutting up the hog, a task he had performed so many times that he no longer had to think about it, he reminisced about their year together. He recalled a conversation he and Alice had when he proposed marriage a year ago.

  “I love you Adrian, but I’m not sure about marriage,” Alice had said. “There’s something I can’t shake. My father killed himself when I was twelve. He blew his head off with a shotgun. I heard the explosion and ran to see what it was, and found his body. It was gruesome. I went into shock, totally catatonic for two months. I still have horrible nightmares.”

  Adrian interrupted. “I am so sorry baby.”

  Alice barely noticing the interruption continued. “Suicide is obscene, the ultimate obscenity of all obscenities. Killing yourself where your daughter will find you is the ultimate rejection. I know that I was not the cause; he was mentally ill…but there is a feeling I… fear—no, it’s closer to terror. I’m afraid to commit to anyone that could do that to me again. It terrifies me that if I give my heart I might…” Alice made a soft choking sound and looked down.

  Adrian held her close and said softly, “I’ve never had a suicidal thought in my life. I had a friend that killed himself. I’m still pissed. It’s a cheap way to treat your friends. I would have done anything in the world to help him, but he just went off and killed himself. I’ll never forgive him for that. I can’t imagine what you went through, a million times worse, at least.”

  Alice said. “It’s a nightmare.”

  Adrian replied. “What do you need to hear from me, or know about me, that will make you believe I won’t do that? How can I prove that? The only thing I can do is swear I will never kill myself, no matter what, no matter how bad it gets.”