Adrian's War

by Lloyd Tackitt

  Adrian slowly moved away from the area of the sign. He circled the camp and found three more in obvious locations. Wolfgang wanted Adrian to know. He had made sure that Adrian would see one of the signs. He worked himself carefully into a position where he could observe. He would confirm with his own eyes that Wolfgang was telling the truth. Wolfgang was.

  Chapter 18

  ADRIAN WATCHED THE HOSTAGES HELD in the picnic table shelter. He could see four women, two children—a boy and a girl—and two men. They were not tied, but they were guarded by four armed men. They weren’t going to escape. As he watched, they were put to work cooking lunch. They were roasting meat over the large, open grill. Wolfgang’s men would come in and eat on a shift schedule. Ten men at a time only. They leered at the women as they ate. It was easy to see, even from the distance Adrian watched, that these men were hungry for women. From what his nailed-to-the-wall prisoner had told him, when they did get their hands on women, it was gang rape, sometimes to the death. What his prisoner hadn’t told him but he now knew, was that the victims would be eaten afterwards.

  Adrian dimly recalled having seen some of these hostages in the village—a lifetime ago, when he first came to the mountains. He had watched the village from hiding, decided he didn’t want to talk to anyone, and moved on. He had made no contact with them, or anyone else, since leaving the Palo Duro Canyon. Wolfgang had out-thought him that was for sure. Adrian had watched the village, and a couple of small tribes as well. There were other people on the mountain besides Wolfgang and his men, but Adrian had largely forgotten about them, until now. He was only reminded of them when the hunters returned with “meat.”

  The sign had said, “Adrian—what you do to us, we do to the hostages.” So simple, so irreversibly game-changing. It had returned Adrian to sanity in one long dizzying moment. Wolfgang had ended Adrian’s personal war completely with that one simple move. Adrian’s head was spinning with the implications. He had never considered that the village was in play. He had barely thought about it at all, seeing it as just something that might move Wolfgang to leave camp, creating opportunities for ambush along the road. If Adrian had thought of Wolfgang taking hostages to use against him, he might have dismissed it. What did he care what happened to the villagers? It wasn’t his village, he didn’t know those people. He didn’t owe them anything. If they got captured it was their own fault for being weak and stupid. The village should have eradicated Wolfgang and his thugs a long time ago. But seeing the hostages was different.

  He didn’t understand the village’s apparent weakness. There were enough of them to put up a good fight. He had seen guns; surely there were many more that he hadn’t seen. There weren’t as many men in the village as Wolfgang had, but there were enough to fight. Enough to make sure Wolfgang would leave them alone afterward. They had families to defend—why on earth had they not done something about these criminals a long time ago? Why tolerate the “protection” costs? Adrian was incapable of bending his mind to a point of view that made acceptance of tyranny palatable. He would die first; he didn’t understand anyone thinking otherwise.

  But when he saw the hostages, he knew his personal war was over. These were innocent people involuntarily drawn into his war. He would not, under any circumstances, be the direct cause of harm to these people. Not if he could help it. This was no longer about him. It was no longer a matter in which time was on his side. Time was against him now. Sooner or later, Wolfgang would allow the men to rape the women, and children. No doubt the men too. Sooner or later Wolfgang would demand Adrian’s surrender, and start killing hostages on a timetable until he did. Adrian had one big card to buy time with: to avoid letting Wolfgang know he was aware of the hostage situation. He had to leave no sign he was anywhere in the vicinity. He had to change his strategy; the tactics would follow.

  If Wolfgang got even a whiff that Adrian had read the sign and seen the hostages, he would immediately start hurting them to bring Adrian in. He wouldn’t be satisfied to simply use the threat of harming them as a shield, he would actively harm them, even kill them, to get Adrian in his clutches. There was no way that Wolfgang would allow Adrian to walk away. He wanted to kill Adrian in the worst possible kind of way, literally. Adrian had been routinely insulting Wolfgang for so long that hatred consumed every waking second of Wolfgang’s life.

  It was still war, but it was no longer just Adrian’s war. It was the villagers’ war too. Adrian had to go to the village, face their wrath for having given the raiders an excuse to take hostages, then convince them to fight with him, or continue to be slaves. He would have to be convincing. He might get shot before he even had a chance to convince them. Surely they would take out their anger on him, since they didn’t seem to be taking it out on Wolfgang. Adrian viewed the villagers as weak, or they would have done something about Wolfgang a long time ago.

  Weak people, Adrian thought, invariably directed their anger at the wrong target. They defended themselves in their own minds, gave themselves excuses. They misdirected their own thoughts away from rightfully blaming themselves by wrongfully blaming others, or circumstances they thought were beyond their control. Adrian believed he would walk into a group of weak willed people, and that instead of laying blame where it belonged just might lay it on him since he was only one man. After all, they would be able to gang up on one man, giving themselves an outlet for the anger that should be directed at themselves for allowing the situation to continue, and Wolfgang for causing the whole thing in the first place.

  Adrian left the camp and walked back to his wickiup. He was careful not to leave tracks. If he had been Wolfgang he would have sent out three-man patrols to roam the mountainside at random, looking for signs and tracks. Wolfgang had surprised him with the hostage move; perhaps he was smarter than Adrian had given him credit for. Perhaps he just thought differently, which was almost the same thing, and often had the same result. The random patrols might be out; it would be a good move. It was a simple tactic. They didn’t know where Adrian was; only that he was drawn over and over to the mining camp. It was a statistical thing. Send out patrols, have them roam around in a large circle around the camp. Allow them to choose when and in what direction to move. Tell them to stop frequently, spend a whole day where they thought he might appear. Sooner or later the math would work out and they would spot him.

  Adrian was cautious, frequently checking all around him for signs of stalkers. He watched and listened to the wildlife. A bird suddenly flying up, or turning sharply away at the last second before landing in a bush, could indicate a hidden watcher, man or beast. Birds were one of the best signals that something was different in an area. There were other signals. Squirrels would fuss, or suddenly stop chucking to the other squirrels. A frightened squirrel running up a tree made a distinctive sound as its claws dug into the bark. Startled deer would snort, a short, loud exhalation of air through the nostrils. Often they would stamp their feet several times. When deer or elk ran, they could be heard for a long time as they tore up the ground, long after they had vanished from sight. Crows and magpies would sound the alarm when seeing a stranger. Adrian listened for these audible signals, and was careful to not cause them himself so that someone else might hear.

  He stopped to listen often. He listened for silence where there should be background noises indicating someone or something that didn’t belong. Tree frogs suddenly going silent, bird sounds conspicuously absent. He listened closely, for lack of sounds were as telling as sounds themselves. He used his sense of smell as much as he could. Some odors could be easily detected by a man. Men living in the woods often stank, smelling of stale sweat, unclean habits, and smoke from sitting by many fires. In the right conditions they could be located two or three hundred yards away. Adrian walked slowly, carefully, leaving as few tracks as possible, all the while sniffing silently at the air.

  He took the necessary amount of time, but moved as quickly as he could under the circumstances. He couldn’t afford to slip up now and
get captured or killed. It would be easy to become overly hasty and under-cautious. It was necessary to take precautions, and those precautions took time to implement. Time was no longer on his side. He had gone from a relaxed state of mind to a man driven by an immutable deadline, only he didn’t know what the deadline was. He just knew there was one, and people’s lives depended on him beating it. “Deadline—truer nomenclature there never was,” he thought.

  He wasn’t looking forward to the scene he was likely to encounter at the village, but he had to go. He had to recruit them into the war. The war had changed. Now it needed to be fought and ended as soon as possible. All of Wolfgang’s men, and especially Wolfgang himself, had to be killed. They were a cancerous growth that the people of the mountain could no longer tolerate. They had to do something about it. They had to help—their people had been taken hostage. He had to get through to them quickly, move them past what he expected to be their anger at him, and get them motivated toward the right and proper goal.

  Adrian saw the village, waited in the woods, and watched for a few minutes. He looked down at himself and thought about the impression he was about to make. He had stopped at a creek that had a pool of unfrozen water. Spring really was close. He had bathed, cut his hair, and shaved, using his surgically sharp bowie knife. He had put the Stone Age tools away. He had left his hammer and flint tools in his wickiup. He replaced them with the modern steel knife, rifle, and pistol. He dressed in his best elk skin clothes, cleaning them as well as possible short of washing them. There was no time for washing and drying leather clothes, not in this weather.

  They would see a wild man. Tall and thin, but not unhealthily so. His hair was cut short, but done so seemingly randomly; it was difficult to give oneself a decent haircut with a large knife. He was gaunt and his skin was pale white from the long winter. Scars from the bear’s claws showed above his collar, long, puckered, and red furrows that went down his chest and arm. He hadn’t spoken aloud in months, and when he tried out his voice it out had sounded strange to him. It was croaky from lack of use. He would not make much of an impression on these people. He had been living like a Stone Age man for a long time, and it showed.

  “Nothing for it, just do it and get on with the show,” he thought as he stepped onto the main road into the village and walked into sight. He didn’t know what to expect, but he was certain it would be unpleasant. He walked into the village, stopped in the street and stood there looking around. There was no one in sight. All the buildings were shuttered and doors closed. There was smoke coming from some of the chimneys. People were in the buildings, waiting for something or someone whom was most certainly not welcome. It was a pleasant enough day, people would normally be outside on a day like this. Adrian stood there for what seemed ages, then a door slowly opened. Adrian thought, “OK, here we go. Bad stuff about to happen.”

  Adrian called out loudly, but just short of a shout. “Hello, I’m Adrian Hunter. I need to talk to the village leader.”

  What happened next was beyond anything Adrian had imagined.

  Chapter 19

  AN OLDER WOMAN STEPPED OUT of the doorway that had opened. Other doors opened up one after another up and down the street. Armed men, and in some cases armed women, stepped out of the doorways. “Uh-oh,” Adrian thought. “This is going to get ugly fast.” But he needed to enlist their aid, so he stood his ground. The armed people were soon joined by others, some armed some not. Children came out too. They all stared at Adrian with expressions that were impossible to read.

  The old woman said, “Adrian Hunter, you said? You the Adrian Hunter what’s been warring on Wolfgang?” She stepped closer, scrutinizing Adrian up and down.

  Adrian asked with puzzlement “Yes, Ma’am. How did you know about that?”

  The old woman grinned and strode up to Adrian with her hand out to shake. “Why son, you’re a legend all up and down these mountains and probably across half the entire United States by now, or what’s left of it. We heard about you from that deserter that run away from Wolfgang. We caught him skulking around here and he told us all about how you was whupping those boys up there on the mountain all by yourself. You’re a hero, son, a gol-darned gold-plated honest-to-God hero round here.” The old woman pumped Adrian’s hand up and down like she was never going to stop.

  People were crowding all around him, slapping him on the back, their faces filled with smiles. The children were fighting to get to a spot where they could reach out and touch him. Adrian was frozen in shock. He didn’t know what to do; he was starting to feel panicky with so many people crowded up against him.

  “Whoa now!” the old woman shouted. “Whoa now! Give the boy room to breathe. Good God, folks, back up! Don’t trample him. We want him to feel welcome don’t we? Give him some room I said!” The old woman began pushing people back, clearing a small space in front of them. She turned back to Adrian and said, “Son, we’ve been praying you’d come along here someday. We need your help. Come along with me to the meeting room, we need to get everyone together.” The old woman turned and walked off. Adrian, still too shocked to say anything, automatically followed. The entire crowd followed on his heels.

  Adrian entered the room behind the old woman. The rest of the village crowded in. The room filled with men, women, and children. There was jostling as the villagers jockeyed to get in position to see Adrian. They kept a small distance from him, but he was feeling claustrophobic in the crowded room filled with strangers who seemed to be in awe of him. “Like a visiting movie star,” Adrian thought. Two old men joined the old woman at the front of the room. She grabbed up a gavel lying on a trestle table and began banging the tabletop. “Quiet, everybody, quiet. We have town business to discuss and not much time to do it in. Quiet now, quiet!” She banged the gavel lighter and lighter and the murmuring of the crowd settled into an intense silence.

  The three elders took seats behind the table, facing Adrian and the crowd. The old woman said, “Somebody fetch him a chair. Don’t make him stand there! Come on, move it! Hurry up and bring him a chair.” A chair appeared in the back of the room and was handed overhead from hand to hand until it reached Adrian. He took the chair and sat down at the head of the table. He didn’t know whether to look at the elders or at the villagers, so he sat at an angle where he could see both.

  The old woman stood up. “Ladies and Gentlemen, as you have no doubt heard by now, this is Adrian Hunter!” She pointed at Adrian with a dramatic gesture as she spoke. The villagers began shouting and whistling, stomping their feet and clapping. Some of the women were crying, some of the men were laughing. Adrian thought they had gone nuts. He was trapped in a room with a bunch of crazies. He had expected bad things when he came to the village, but this was crazy.

  The old woman began pounding the gavel again. She was quite a showman, controlling the crowd easily. She got them to silence again, and when the room was quiet she turned to Adrian and said, “Tell us what to do. Show us how to get our people back and how to get rid of those monsters once and for all. Tell us, son, we’ve been waiting for you. The floor is yours.” The old woman sat down with a sigh of pure relief, as though she had just set down the heaviest burden that a woman could bear. The villagers looked at Adrian with fascinated anticipation.

  Adrian thought, “They look at me like gold and pearls are about to spew out of my mouth. Too bad it won’t happen that way, but I’ll make the best of it.” He stood and faced the villagers.

  “I saw the hostages this morning. They were in good physical condition at the time. I don’t think that will last long, though. We have two enemies, time and Wolfgang, in that order. If you’re willing to go to battle for your people, if you’re willing to fight for your homes and your families, I’ll lead you. If you do exactly what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, you can win and rid yourselves of those cannibals. You can get your people back and you can kill every one of those sons-of-bitches.”

  The villagers cheered, shouted, clapped, whistled
, stomped, and waved their arms like nothing he had ever seen before. “My God!” he thought. “They would follow me into a lion’s den armed with switches. If they hold on to that enthusiasm, we have a real shot at this.” Adrian held up his arms to quiet them and the crowd went silent instantly. “Folks, we have to move fast. We need every able-bodied man that can walk and shoot. No children and no women. Men eighteen years or older only. Meet me in the street in thirty minutes. Bring your best rifles and pistols. Bring shotguns if you can carry them, too. Dress warm. Bring whatever you can to eat. There won’t be any fires for cooking, so bring food you can eat cold. We’ll need drinking water and bed rolls, too. Wear clothes that blend in, nothing white or brightly colored. Your best walking boots or shoes. Hurry up, let’s move. Outside this door in thirty minutes. Go!”

  Adrian sat back down as the room quickly emptied. “What’s going on? If they’re so eager to fight, why haven’t they already attacked?” Adrian asked the old woman.

  “They want to fight but they don’t know how. There isn’t a military background in the entire village. This village was set up twenty years ago as a self-sustaining pacifist farming community. No fighters. The guns we have were for hunting. We lived by a strict pacifist code, kept ourselves separated from the rest of the world—it had become too evil to bear. Pacifism works when there are rules of law, and people willing to enforce those rules with whatever force is required. But we have discovered that in a world without rule of law, pacifism is suicidal. Pacifists too easily become victims, basically begging to be run over. We’ve talked and talked about it. All we know to do would be to walk up the road and start shooting. That probably wouldn’t work out so well. We were on the verge of doing just that when you showed up.