Adrian's War

by Lloyd Tackitt

  “Me and Lynn were sent out to see what happened to the scouts that didn’t come back. We found their bodies, found tracks leading here. We watched you for a few minutes an decided that cause you were alone and unarmed we’d rush in an grab you before you knew what was up. Then we was gonna find out what you did to our men. We was gonna take you back an let Wolfgang decide what to do with you. We figured he’d torture you for a few days then kill you when he got bored. It’s what he usually does.”

  Adrian waited, but the prisoner seemed to have run down. “How many men are there?”

  “Seventy two, including Wolfgang himself.”

  “All from that prison break?”

  “Sure, well mostly. We picked up some here and there.”

  “How are they armed?”

  “Rifles and pistols. What we could find in sporting goods stores or take from people. Nothing like military stuff, more like hunting stuff.”

  “How long you been at the mining camp?”

  “Since winter started,” the prisoner said.

  Adrian sat and thought awhile. “Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to turn you loose to go back to Wolfgang and give him a message for me. You tell him that he started this war, and that I’m happy to oblige him. You tell him to get ready. Tell him Adrian Hunter will be along directly.”

  Chapter 10

  ADRIAN RELEASED HIS PRISONER AND gave him a brief head start. He packed pemmican and his bow and arrows and his flint knife. Adrian thought, “Just to make it interesting, I’ll bring them a Stone Age war.” Adrian was thinking of this as a sporting event, a deadly game, but a game nonetheless. His rage at these men was unabated. The rage helped to keep the pain at bay, the insanity helped to keep him from finding the pain, and this war would be the ultimate diversion.

  He followed the ex-prisoner to the mining camp. Adrian suspected that the ex-prisoner was already a dead man. He figured that Wolfgang, from the description he had been given, would be embarrassed to have lost three men, and then to have this wounded and therefore useless mouth to feed show up and announce a war—that would pretty much be a kill the messenger situation. Double up on that; Wolfgang would realize that his man had talked freely to the enemy and his death was not only a sure bet, but it would be slow and painful. It would be a warning to the other men, and help wash away the stain of embarrassment.

  Adrian watched from the woods as the ex-prisoner disappeared into the largest of the cabins, obviously Wolfgang’s. He then scouted around the camp’s fringes, locating and noting vantage points. The mining camp was in a bowl-shaped depression surrounded by woods. There was clear space all around the cabins for two hundred yards. No trees, just short brush. It was easy to spy on the place, dozens of good hiding spots all around it. Adrian saw the main cabin and ten slightly smaller cabins. Across the river there was a long, open-sided structure—a pavilion filled with picnic tables that must serve as the eating and gathering place. The river was small, closer to a creek in size. There was a footbridge across it leading to the pavilion.

  It was an excellent set up for Wolfgang, or had been up to now. “Now,” Adrian thought, “it’s their death trap. They couldn’t have chosen a better spot for me to destroy them. Beautiful.” Adrian continued to take note of the camp’s layout. There were four main trails that led out of the camp. One was the mining camp road where truck traffic had obviously come and gone in the mining days. There were three wide paths worn smooth by foot traffic. Obviously these men were creatures of habit, and felt no threats from their victims. Otherwise they wouldn’t have such obvious trails. They were going to make this easy, at first. As they learned they would become harder to get at, but it should be an easy ride for a while.

  Adrian settled in to watch the camp until dark. It wasn’t long before the ex-prisoner was dragged out of Wolfgang’s cabin by four men; he was kicking and screaming—he knew what was going to happen. They tied him to one of the corner posts on the picnic building. Then a man dressed in a wolf skin coat came out, obviously Wolfgang. The wolf skin coat told Adrian a lot about the man’s ego. Wolfgang began cutting the ex-prisoner with a knife. His screams were easily heard by Adrian. It lasted a long time.

  What happened later shocked Adrian, a feeling that had become very unfamiliar in the past few months. As soon as the man was dead, he was skinned and butchered like a pig. A large fire was built in a spot that had been obviously used many times before for the purpose. The butchered man’s remains were roasted over the fire on a wrought iron rotisserie, turned by hand. The meat was just barely cooked through when the men began tearing into it with a frenzy. As darkness gathered, Adrian watched a scene out of a nightmare; men moving around the fire, roaring with laughter as they ate their former comrade. Adrian had encountered signs of cannibalism after the grid went down. It wasn’t at all uncommon. But he had never actually witnessed it being performed. He considered the creatures before him no longer as men. Now they were disgusting cretins, beasts that must be killed. This would now be a war of total extermination, a slow war of attrition, but one of annihilation. He would continue with the primitive weapons and techniques, and he would be in it to the end.

  Roman had once told Adrian that psychopaths were perhaps the best at survival in any situation. “They don’t have an ounce of empathy in them,” he had said. “They’ll do whatever it takes to survive and do it without a second’s hesitation. They will climb over anyone. They’re smart, quick to act, and completely centered on their own needs and wants. Psychopaths have a different brain structure from normal people. They are in effect animals in human skin. They normally number about one percent of the population, so there were an estimated three-million of them before the grid dropped. But now, given their natural survival abilities, most of those three-million will have survived and mixed into the much reduced population…making up perhaps as much as twenty percent.

  “They will tend to become leaders of gangs because they are skilled at using other people and they thrive on power. Gangs will increase their effectiveness at getting what they want. They are master manipulators. I read an article that claimed many corporate CEOs were psychopaths; they naturally gravitated to the top because they had no morals and would do whatever it took. Lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, anything at all. They destroy their rivals’ careers with impunity because their rivals play by the rules of society, and psychopaths fight by the rule of consequences only. They acknowledge no other rules. Learn the signs and if you run across any of them, whatever else you do, don’t trust them and don’t hesitate to take whatever action is necessary. They won’t.”

  Adrian knew he was watching a psychopath. Adrian doubted his real name was Wolfgang; more likely it was part of his manipulative techniques. He had all of the hallmarks that Roman had warned him about.

  When darkness fell completely Adrian went back to the cabin. Adrian thought, “Sure as God made little green apples, he’ll send men here in the morning with orders to bring me back alive at all costs. He wants to nip this embarrassment in the bud.” He removed all of his possessions and hid them in the forest. Armed with his spear, bow and flint knife he camped away from the cabin. By fire light he removed his arrows from their quiver and modified them.

  He removed the stone tips from the arrows, sharpened the ends to pinpoints, then carefully cut into the wood toward the point, near the tip. This created barbs of splinter wood on each arrow. He cut a deep ring completely around the shaft three inches down from the point. He dipped the arrow tips into bear dung that he gathered for the purpose. He would soak the wood in the dung overnight. When a man was shot with one of these, he would not be in immediate danger of death, unless a major artery or organ was hit. But he would die, eventually and slowly from infection. He cut the barbs into the arrows so that when it was pulled out the contaminated splinters would break off in the wound and remain. With a little luck the entire head would break off at the weak place he created by cutting the ring around the shaft.

 
Only a skilled doctor with a sterile surgical suite and antibiotics could save a man shot with one of these. Wolfgang would soon have a bunch of wounded men on his hands.

  “It’ll be a dilemma for Wolfgang,” Adrian thought to himself. “He can’t start killing and eating all of his wounded; the rest of the men will desert him if he does. He has to try and save them. They’ll get extremely sick and will be in excruciating pain. This will dishearten the healthy men; terrorize them with thoughts of being in that condition too. Wolfgang will not only have this demoralizing force in his camp, but he’ll have to dedicate manpower and resources to aid them. For every five or six wounded men, screaming in agony and dying slow terrifying deaths, there’ll be at least one healthy man taken out of action to care for them. Beautiful, just plain beautiful.” Adrian slept well that night.

  Before daylight the next morning he had chosen his ambush spot. He was certain that the hunting party would come in as straight a line as they could, and that the ex-prisoner had told them exactly where to go. Adrian set up at a point halfway to the cabin. His first ambush spot was the top of a short cliff they would pass by. It gave him an easy field of fire. His plan was to ambush them at several points. His goal was to send everyone back wounded with the slow death arrows. It depended on how many men were sent. He would make more poisoned arrows later; they were easy enough to make. But for now, he had fourteen to work with.

  Shortly after daylight, they came. There were eight of them. “Excellent,” Adrian thought. “I have more than enough arrows. Eight will be a treat to send back. Wolfgang won’t understand at first why they were wounded in such a minor way. He’ll think he is up against some kind of stealthy but ineffective idiot. Later, he’ll realize the true nature of the attack, and will be spitting mad.”

  The men were walking single-file. Adrian waited until the last man passed by, stood, and fired three arrows in quick succession. Each arrow hit one of the men in the lower back or thigh. The other men, slow to react because of the silence of the attack, began shooting in all directions. Adrian had taken cover long before they began to shoot, and they had not seen him so they didn’t know where to aim. It was all Adrian could do not to laugh.

  Before they had finished shooting Adrian was on his way to the next ambush spot. He thought he could probably get two more next time. They would certainly be more alert and react faster. Adrian thought, “If they continue on to the cabin they make themselves vulnerable. There are hundreds of places I can hide and shoot one at a time. If they go back to camp I can do the same thing. They don’t understand what they’re up against.”

  Half an hour later the men appeared, still in single-file. The three Adrian had wounded weren’t with them. They had either been sent back to camp or told to wait until the unit returned. Adrian’s guess was they were told to return to camp. They had set out a point man, in this case the safest position in the line. They had not set out flankers, Adrian wished they would. It would be so simple to pick those men off.

  Again, Adrian waited for the men to pass by, stood, and released two arrows. He watched the two arrows sink deep into the muscle tissue of the two men. Adrian retreated and moved to the next spot, listening to the sound of panicked gun fire behind him. His long bow was a powerful weapon. Made from the seasoned Bois D’Arc, he had carefully shaped it to be as strong as he could pull. He had backed it with elk tendon and hide glue, then wrapped it in wet rawhide that was tightly sewn together. When the rawhide dried, it pulled tight, making a compression sleeve that along with the tendons increased the strength of the bow, and protected the wood from splintering. The string was made of braided elk tendon. Adrian shot it Indian style, pinching the arrow nock with thumb and forefinger, making for a fast, smooth release. The bow had elk horn tips to hold the string.

  Three men were left uninjured. The trick now was to guess whether they would continue forward or return to camp. Adrian was betting on the men continuing forward. They would have pulled out the wooden arrows and thought them relatively harmless, only having sharp points and no broad-heads to do a lot of cutting. They would also be scared of Wolfgang’s reaction. “Afraid to be called cowards. Afraid of being served as dinner,” he thought with a smile.

  Adrian only moved a few hundred yards ahead this time. He knew the similar time lapse between his two previous ambushes would have established a predictable rhythm to his attacks, at least in their minds. The faster interval time would catch them off guard.

  They would also be watching their rear since the two attacks had come from that direction. Adrian would take them head on this time. He believed he could get the point man and the next one in line before they could react. Adrian could shoot, set another arrow, aim, and shoot again in just over three seconds. Because he was shooting instinctive style, no time was wasted in aiming with sights. He was also shooting for center of mass, a large target at these distances that was nearly impossible for him to miss. He heard the men coming and waited behind a tree directly in front of them on the path. He wanted them to see him this time. He wanted them to tell Wolfgang it was only one man bringing this war to him.

  The point man walked into the optimum spot and the second was in easy range. Adrian stepped out from behind a tree with the bow already at full draw, shot instantly, reloaded, and shot again—both arrows true to target. Adrian then jumped swiftly across the trail and disappeared into the woods. He was in view for less than five seconds. The two men who had been shot grabbed at the arrows instead of shooting, a natural reaction. They blocked the man behind them from shooting. Adrian ran swiftly around and back, stepped out of the woods, and shot the final man of the eight. Adrian quickly disappeared back into the woods, out of sight and laughing uproariously, wanting them to hear him, which they did. They heard insane laughter from an obviously deranged man with long hair and a full beard, who appeared out of thin air dressed in buck-skins and bear fur, shot them with pointed sticks, then disappeared into the forest before they could react.

  They gave up the mission. Adrian knew that even though the pointed arrows weren’t immediately life threatening, they still hurt like hell. The wounds were mostly in muscle tissue, which would stiffen immediately after being hit. The more time that passed, the more it hurt. These men had no idea how much pain they were in for, but they knew they were hurting now and they knew they couldn’t catch this damned ghost. So they reluctantly went back to camp. Telling Wolfgang how they had been humiliated wasn’t going to be pleasant, but the fact that there were eight of them in the same position gave them some protection against his wrath, and appetite. Singling out one member now and then to make an example of was one thing. If he tried to punish eight of them at the same time he was liable to wake up alone the next morning. These men followed him because they chose to. They could just as easily choose not to and vote with their feet in the night.

  Wolfgang was going to be extremely angry, even angrier because he could do nothing about it. This madman left him impotent with rage and embarrassment so intense that he would be unable to hide the humiliation from his men. This was just as Adrian intended.

  Chapter 11

  ADRIAN CIRCLED AROUND THE TRAIL the men had taken. He knew where they would exit the woods at the camp. He got into position to watch the camp as the men came into the opening. There were five of them. That meant the first three had already returned. Wolfgang would be furious when these five showed up without a prisoner. On cue, Wolfgang came out of his cabin stalking rigidly up to the men, meeting them as they came off the bridge.

  Adrian watched the men stand with heads down as Wolfgang gestured wildly with his arms, his shouts carrying clear to his observation post. It was like watching theater to Adrian, and he was enjoying the show. He considered Wolfgang’s options. He could abandon the camp, but that was not likely. Wherever they went, Adrian would simply follow them. They wouldn’t be safer in town than they were in the woods. Wolfgang could send out more patrols; that seemed most likely. It was foolish and wouldn’t accomplish a
nything other than to get more men wounded, but it was action and leaders were afraid of inaction, it made them look weak. Wolfgang really had no good options. Adrian was elusive in the woods and he had a sting, but at this point they weren’t taking the sting seriously. They were just insulted.

  The only point of reference they had for him was the cabin. He had abandoned it, and they might guess that he had, but they wouldn’t know for sure. They certainly didn’t know where else to look for him. Trying to find him in the woods would be a needle in a thousand haystacks operation. Worse, Adrian was a needle that actively bit back while moving its hiding place around. If they went out after him again it would be to the cabin again, but Adrian had a hunch they would take a different route. They would think it stupid to take the same route as before, and normally Adrian would agree, but in this case it made no difference. He would be there ambushing them whatever way they went.

  Adrian chose the trail they would most likely take. He spent several hours that night making preparations, including making a crude grass dummy, then took up position near the trail the next morning. He chose a spot not far from the mining camp. If Wolfgang sent only a few men, Adrian might be able to send them back home quickly. If he sent a lot of men, it would take a little longer. Either way was fine; this was a war of attrition and nerves. Time was on Adrian’s side, and he had no shortage of nerve.

  Adrian watched as three men filed by him. They were moving along carelessly, noisily. They clearly didn’t expect him to attack this close to the mining camp. It was amazing how foolish people could be. Just because the previous attacks had been further away, they assumed any more attacks would also be at the same distance. When the last man passed Adrian, he pulled on the cord next to him. The cord was strung through the woods and tied to the grass dummy. When the cord was pulled, the dummy was released to swing out and across the trail. The men saw what they thought was Adrian running across the trail in front of them. They began firing at the dummy immediately. While they were busy firing, Adrian stood and released three fast arrows. Then he disappeared into the woods. He hit all three; they were close and easy targets. By the time they turned to see where the arrows had come from, he was gone. Adrian ran toward the camp. He hoped that the close by gunfire would draw more men down the trail—and it did.