Adrian's War

by Lloyd Tackitt

  Outside the snow continued to fall, faster and thicker. Wolfgang found his dead hunter. He made the right decision and stayed on the frozen stream, heading downhill looking for tracks on either side. As the snow fell, his hopes fell with it. By the time he and his men passed the small overhang the snow was falling rapidly. Not one of the men glanced at the overhang; not one noticed it in any way. They walked on and eventually gave up, returning to camp defeated and exhausted. They barred themselves inside their cabins each night, and went into the woods as little as possible. They waited for the next attack. And waited.

  Adrian was comatose for over a week without regaining consciousness, without dreams. When the swelling in his brain had retreated, he began to swim back to consciousness. The bear had shifted positions several times during the week, and Adrian had shifted with her. He was always against her rump, but sometimes it was his belly pressed up against it, and sometimes it was his back. At one point his arm had extended up over the sow and against her stomach. The twins inside were large now; they would be coming out soon. Spring was near. His hand felt the babies moving, his quiet subconscious brain had nothing better to do in the dark cave than to pay attention and observe, as it always did. The information was stored somewhere deep and inaccessible in Adrian’s brain. Every bit of data in a man’s brain helps to form who he is, and this was no exception.

  When nearly ten days had passed, Adrian briefly came close to consciousness. On the eleventh day he came fully awake. He lay still for a long time gathering data. He was warm and it was almost pitch black. There was a small trickle of light coming from the direction of his feet. He was enveloped in a strong smell. A smell that normally he would have found overpowering, but because he had acclimated to it, wasn’t. He slowly became aware that his face was pressed into something furry, the source of the warmth. It was something furry, warm, and very big. It was something alive. These thoughts were slow to form in his mind, awakening as it was from a long recovery.

  His first coherent thought was, “Don’t panic. Don’t tense up, don’t act awake. Don’t panic.” He lay still, gathering more data. He recalled with some difficulty that he had been head hit by a large caliber rifle bullet. He remembered vaguely killing the man who had shot him, although he wasn’t clear on all of the details. He very vaguely recalled crawling into a hole under a tree.

  “Oh Shit! I’m lying with my face on a bear that’s asleep in a hole in the ground! Jesus Christ on little tiny crutches!” Adrian began to inch, ever so slowly, away from the bear. As he lost contact with its rump against his face the bear twitched, moved a bit, rumbled out a snore, and settled back to deep sleep. Adrian kept moving away slowly. As he crawled he found the rifle and brought it out with him.

  When he crawled out of the hole into the blindingly bright sunlight bouncing off the untracked snow, he stumbled away from the hole two hundred yards then sat down to thank about what had happened, and what he had to do next. He had his hammer, still on his wrist with the thong. He had his bear robe, possibly a big part of why he hadn’t awakened the bear and become her dinner. He had five pounds of bear pemmican. He was starving. He hadn’t eaten in over a week and his body had used up a lot of energy healing and staying warm. He eagerly dug into the pemmican, but as he brought it up to his mouth the smell of it hit him hard. “What?” he thought. He had always loved the smell of the bear meat, loved the taste. But now he stared at it and threw it away. For some reason, he couldn’t make himself eat it. Knew he would never eat bear meat again. “Strange.”

  He needed water, and found the canteen on his belt, but didn’t recognize it. He didn’t remember taking it from the dead man. The water inside was cold but not frozen. He drank it all, then put the canteen back on his belt. Now he needed food and shelter. He knew vaguely where he was. Knew that he had several food caches that he could get to, but they were all bear meat. He also needed to make another bow, or find the one he had lost. He had a lot to do before taking up the war again. He was ready to continue the assault on Wolfgang and his men, but an almost imperceptible tiny bit less eager. “First things first. Food, shelter, weapons, rest, finish healing. Then attack.”

  Adrian stood and moved back up the frozen creek. His legs were shaky but they steadied as he walked, warmed up, and stretched his cramped muscles. “Damn, saved by a sleeping bear. Who would believe that we hibernated together?” he mused to himself.

  He reached the tree line again, found where he had killed the man. His “buddies” had left his body for the scavengers, and they had been at it pretty steady. Adrian probed around in the snow drift and found his bow, still in good shape thanks to the rawhide covering. He found the arrows too; they were slightly warped but could be straightened over a fire.

  Adrian thought about where to take shelter and decided that his old wickiup would be ideal. “Far enough away they won’t be looking for me. Close enough to get back when I’m ready to.” He began walking east by south, taking care to cover his tracks where he could. When he got closer to his wickiup he began hunting elk. He was careful to watch for other elk hunters, a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget. He hunted with the bow, using arrows with razor sharp flint points that he’d made what seemed like a long time ago, but had actually only been a few months. It didn’t take him long to find and down an elk. He butchered and quartered the animal, then in six separate trips carried it to his wickiup.

  A possum had taken up residence. He shooed it out, cleaned the place up, and soon had a cozy fire going. Adrian was ravenous, but possum was way down his list of potential meals. They were largely carrion eaters, essentially four legged vultures. Nothing he would eat unless he was far inside starvation’s door. He stripped the elk down and began the process of making pemmican while eating as many fire-sizzled steaks as he could. He cooked marrowbones and sucked their rich and juicy insides. Roasted marrow was the tastiest thing in the wild world.

  His body demanded redress for the near starvation he had put it through, and he gave it back as much as he could, as fast as he could. He slept from nightfall to daylight each day, often dreaming of bears. He was regaining his strength, building his food reserves and plotting his next moves. When he returned he would return with a vengeance. By now, Wolfgang must be hoping that the bullet had wounded and eventually killed him. He had been too quiet and left no tracks.

  Adrian killed another elk and made the entire animal into pemmican. He used the hide to make par fleche bags to store it. A sharpened bone splinter from the elk made the needle which he used to sew them shut with strings of the elk’s sinews. He ate everything else. Only the hooves and the bones were not completely used in one way or another. Even the bones were broken down and boiled after the marrow was removed. Boiling the bones removed the last traces of edible compounds inside the bone cells, making a thin but nutritious broth. A fine hot drink on cold days. The hooves could have been carved into ornaments. Adrian experimented with the broken bones and the hooves, making various arrow tips. He found ways to use them both, but not for the war.

  The stick points with the slivers cut backwards in them were working fine, easy to make and maintain. “Don’t over complicate,” was a prime rule of combat. He began scouting out the enemy camp, as though it were the first time he had seen it. He suspected that they would have made some changes. He watched, waited, and watched some more. He only had a few weeks of snow to worry with. Soon it would begin to melt. With luck there might be one of those famous warm winds he remembered reading about in the western novels. “A sirocco? Something like that. A warm wind that melted off snow.” When the snow was gone he would be free to move about as much as he wanted without leaving tracks. Then, the war would be on, really on.

  Chapter 17

  ADRIAN WATCHED THE CAMP FROM a new spot. He built a new low profile lean-to just tall enough for him to stretch out flat inside. It was shaped like a small pup-tent. He used forked sticks pushed into the ground, placing them in pairs at angles criss-crossing each other. Then he laid a lo
ng stick down the forks. This made a long and low A-frame structure. The space from the ground to the ridgepole spanned thirty inches. More sticks were laid against the ridgepole and tied off with cordage. Then he cut tree boughs and wove them in and out through the structure to hold them in place. He gathered dead grass, tied in bundles, and laid them over the boughs. When he was done, the lean-to blended in with its surroundings. It was built inside thick brush. It made a tube in which he could lay down full-length, and pull a brush plug into the opening if he wanted to block out the wind entirely. That was useful for when he slept in it at night. He added dead brush along it to break up any straight outlines.

  His new shelter kept the snow from falling on him, and once covered with snow his body heat stayed inside with him. He covered the ground beneath him with pine boughs to create insulation between him and the cold, damp ground. He could stay there comfortably all day. All night too if he was inclined to. The camp was as it had been before. The morning trap patrol was still performed, but it was performed with a lack of enthusiasm. They had not found any new traps for a long time. But they would probably go on doing it until they knew for a fact that Adrian was dead.

  The perimeter patrols performed their daily ritual as well. They still swept their trail every morning for new traps, and did not venture away from it. By now the swipe traps would be useless. The limbs, if still bent back, would have lost their ability to spring back. The punji pits could still be dangerous, but most likely they would be easy to spot now. The flimsy tops required maintenance or weather would collapse them. Adrian didn’t think any of his traps would be of value now. It was time to put in some new ones, to let them know he was back. He watched carefully for three days and determined that there were new habits, new patterns he could use to his advantage.

  The morning sweep was performed by the same men. They followed the same routine every time. They stood in the same place in line, started at the same places, stopped at the same places. It was like watching a clockwork machine. There were five places where they walked without checking the ground—short little areas where they transitioned from one sweep line to another. He took special note of those five places, visually counting off paces from various landmarks, cross referencing with paces from other land marks to exactly triangulate the spots. Then he went to sleep. He would be up all night so he would need the rest.

  Sleep was something Adrian had almost always been able to do on a moment’s notice. It was a skill he learned and perfected in the Army. A soldier sleeps when he can, and can sleep anywhere. Adrian had even learned to sleep while standing at attention in basic training. He, and most of the soldiers, could sleep for fifteen to twenty seconds while standing rigidly. During those seconds the soldier’s body would begin to slowly move back and forth as it tried to keep its balance. Eventually the solider would lean too far, start to lose balance and snap back to attention. A platoon of men kept standing at attention for several hours looked like a forest of sea kelp slowly waving back and forth. Sleeping lying down in a snug, warm lean-to was a piece of cake, now that he had his war to distract him.

  He waited until shortly after midnight. There were still no outside sentries, not after his hammer attack. He carefully located the five spots, dug in punji traps near each, and covered them. It took him until almost daylight. He had to be completely silent. If they knew he had been in camp that night they would be too careful when morning came. He thought he might get one man in one trap, if he was lucky. He exfiltrated the camp and returned to his lean-to. He waited as the sun came up and watched as the men came out and began to perform their exact routine. They missed stepping in his first trap by inches, missed the second trap by at least a foot.

  Their blind luck ended when one of the men stepped into the third trap and screamed. His scream was of rage, not pain. He would lose the foot, become one of the cooks, one of the cripples that remained always in camp, invisible to the two-footed men. That is, if he survived the crude amputation he was about to experience, and weeks of painful healing. His outrage was palpable. The rest of the men froze in their tracks. No one moved to help him for a solid minute. Then the men began using the sticks with true intensity, the way they should have been using them, but had been lulled away from in Adrian’s absence. It didn’t take them long to find the other four traps. During the search the men were constantly making obscene gestures towards the wood line, once or twice in his actual direction. Their terror and anger had been rekindled. If they ever caught him alive they would torture him for weeks before letting him die.

  Adrian watched. He didn’t feel the same exhilaration that he had felt before the head wound. He didn’t feel remorse; the war was still on and they had started it. They were the lowest form of human life imaginable—cannibals. He only felt grim satisfaction in a plan that worked. He continued to watch as the men completed sweeping the camp for traps, and then as the roving patrols moved carefully out to do their rounds. They swept everything in front of them all the way to their usual trails, then swept those thoroughly, too. Adrian knew they would after finding fresh traps in camp. It was pointless to have set traps for them, so he hadn’t. He had planted the traps in their minds now, a far more effective strategy.

  Adrian had maintained a count of how many men were able-bodied. His attacks had taken a large toll on Wolfgang’s force. Wolfgang did not have a source from which he could draw more recruits. Every man lost was a drop in resources. They had gotten better at treating the wounds he and his traps inflicted. They had learned the hard way that the only chance to save the men was to completely carve out all tissue around the wound to its full diameter, then cauterize the entire area with white-hot metal rods. He had seen them perform the operation four times, each time outside on one of the picnic tables. They learned to do it as soon as the wounded man was back in camp. It was a gruesome sight to see. Each time they did it, the man’s life had been saved, but usually at the cost of the full use of his body. Doing that to a shoulder wound pretty much guaranteed that arm wouldn’t work again. A wound in the thigh and the leg was never strong again.

  Whenever he watched this procedure it had disappointed him that the men would be spared. He would have to kill them at some point. He also noticed how agitated the rest of the men became. They would prowl the camp restlessly, looking at the woods with angry faces. Psychologically these men were at their wits’ end. They didn’t know what to do about Adrian. They had tried as hard as they knew how to find him, and had only gotten men killed in the process. He came into their camp at night with impunity, seemingly invisible. They only felt safe at night, barred inside their cabins, and even then they were scared to death of him setting the cabins on fire. They wondered why he didn’t. During the day they were safe as long as they stayed in camp. Safe, so far. They knew that he had rifles and ammunition. If he chose to start sniping they wouldn’t be safe anywhere. They wondered why he didn’t.

  Adrian knew the usefulness of the poisoned puncture wound had run its course. It was time to change tactics. It was time to shake up the game, come at them from a completely new angle. Adrian gave it a lot of thought, decided that he would wait for his next moves until after the snow melt. That should only be two or three weeks at most. Spring was well underway. Plants were growing again. Adrian’s war could wait. He was in no hurry, had no plans to go anywhere. He had no plans for after the war. He was a patient man with an obsession. He would check back in on them every few days. Leave them some sign that he was still around to keep them on their toes.

  Adrian returned to his wickiup camp and made some minor improvements. He re-mudded the interior and refreshed the brush covering on the exterior. He sewed up some new holes in the hides that covered it—mice had been eating while he was away. He was keeping his hands busy while his mind worked on his next set of tactics. After four days he decided to return and leave a few fresh traps in the roving patrols corridor. He knew they would find them, but that was OK. They were just to let them know he was still around.
As he approached the camp he walked parallel to the east footpath. He noticed something new. On the path there was a signpost, and a sign.

  “Ah, he thought. “Bait! They’re trying to get me to come to the sign to read it. Either they have an ambush set up, or they have rigged their own traps. If it was me I would set the trap for the furthest spot from which the sign can be seen and read. Not right in front of it.”

  Adrian sat down and waited until dark. He knew that if there were men waiting in ambush that they would give themselves away. Men are restless creatures, sooner or later they have to move or talk. The battle of ambush goes to the one who can wait the longest without moving. If they had seen Adrian they would have already attacked, so he simply sat down where he was and waited. After the night was half over and he had not heard or seen a sign of a human, he was convinced there was no ambush. It was too dark to look for traps, so he lay down and went to sleep.

  At daylight he ate a double handful of elk pemmican. It wasn’t as good as the bear pemmican had been, not as rich, but he still had absolutely no interest in eating bear meat. Elk pemmican would do the job. He waited to see if perhaps men would come to set up an ambush, but none showed. He slowly checked out the area he thought would be most likely to be booby-trapped but found nothing. He stood and read the sign from forty yards away. It was plain and simple, and a complete game-changer. Adrian was stunned by the simplicity of it, the evil genius of it. Wolfgang’s checkmate took him completely by surprise.