This is a novel I wrote in the 2000's and never published. I guess I didn't want to go through the hassle of getting an agent, etc. I've decided to publish it here in case anyone wants to read it. I'll try and make regular posts of the chapters every two weeks or so. Please note that the manuscript has not been edited, so there may be some typos. DL
The Patriot War
Chapter One
Scott Melville liked nothing better than hunting deer. He had learned from his uncle who was a masterful stalker of deer and every other thing that walked on four legs. His uncle had a saying: The point of hunting was not the kill, it was having the patience required to get the kill. Scott understood patience; he understood that it took patience to wait for the quarry to move into place, to feel safe, to think it was unobserved, then the kill was an easy pull of the trigger. Try to kill a deer to soon, try to kill anything to soon, and it would get away.
Ed Beasely, a short man with a limp from the war, sat next to Scott in their deer stand, and would never understand patience. Ed was more interest in gossiping and discussing the habits of women and other people than in hunting. He was tagging along with Scott, and Scott had to let him because the deer stand was on his property. It consisted of a clearing in the forest with a crumpled, rusted 1957 Chevy Bel-air four-door hard top, which was painted green and black, camouflage style; there were dead oak leaves on the roof and small bushes on its side. The stand had been there forever, built by Scott’s uncle before the family sold the land adjacent to their farm to the Beasley’s before the war. Since the setting sun was behind them, it would be in the eyes of the target deer as it looked toward the car.
“Patricia Owens has expressed an interest in you,” Ed whispered.
“That so?” Scott didn’t need another girlfriend.
“Yeah, she told my sister that she’d ball you in a moment.”
Scott could care less. The air downwind smelled of smoke, which hung in the air like fog but not as thick, a reminder of the war in the hills around the farm near Oroville, in the Sacramento valley of California. The sunset, orange and gold over the Coast Range to the west, was behind him.
“Maybe you should take an interest in her,” Scott suggested.
“She likes army types.”
“You were in the FDF.”
“Apparently I don’t look like an army type. And my limp is not exactly an attractive feature. Still, I have given the matter some thought.”
Scott mouth remained a thin line. He crouched in the front seat of the Chevy with his 30-06 deer rifle, the barrel of which rested near the opening of the blown-out windshield. Rain had rusted the floor and door panels of the car.
The August heat smothered him. Sunsets should be cooler, he thought. The red dust of the Sierra foothill summer lay thick on everything, and the evening sunset was even more colorful from recent volcanic activity at Mount Lassen, an active volcano ninety miles to the Northeast.
“So the word is they are paying big for information on collaborators,” Ed said.
“That so?”
“Two books of gasoline ration stamps. Think of all the food you could trade for with those. Cigarettes even.”
Scott would like to have a cigarette. He hadn’t smoke since he came back from Utah. While he watched the seconds tick away on his Federal Defense Force watch, a parting gift from his commanding officer, he kept careful eye on the brush in front of him. Scott had a rugged look, brought on by the deprivations of the war; he had rough skin that was pulled tight over muscles. This made him handsome to many women, but Scott, by and large, had never made women a priority in his life. His muscular build, medium height and relaxed demeanor had won the heart of more than one girl; but the army had always been first in in his life. A family could wait as far as he was concerned. That was changing though, since he had been medically discharged and was technically out of the fight.
His sniper unit, the Heart Breakers, had the highest kill rate of any unit in the FDF. He had worked with three spotters in his two-and-a-half-year stint and had survived them all in the fierce fighting around Salt Lake City. Leaving only after being forced out on a medical discharge—a psych discharge—he was still there in spirit, killing the damn rebels and making the country safe again for loyal citizens. He would have stayed there forever if they had let him.
He felt one of his headaches coming on; they started as a pain in the middle of his head like he had drunk cold soda too fast, then the tingling in his arms and legs would start. His vision would blur and sometimes he flashed back to his days in Utah, good days up to the point of the attacks in the Wahsatch Mountains. He snapped a smelling salt capsule and put it under his nose. It helped; the pain began to recede and soon he felt normal.
“How’s life with Sue?” Ed asked. “I’ll bet she is a handful in bed.” Ed chuckled.
Scott remained silent and fixed his gaze on the bushes around the clearing.
“You don’t talk much do you,” Ed said.
“Talk scares away the deer,” Scott said. He brushed brown hair away from pale blue eyes, never taking his gaze from the clearing. Satisfied that no deer were close, he took out his topographical map of the area around the clearing and studied it. The deer scats, rubs, and tracks he had found on his reconnaissance of the area that morning were carefully marked in pencil; the trail as seen from the top of an oak tree. His map had been folded and scribbled over many times, worn through on the edges, yet still usable, more so than any others to which he had access. He had cultivated this hunting spot for many years before he left for the war, leaving hay and salt here on a regular basis, and being careful not to take too many bucks, lest they become wary.
“Well, getting a deer is not everything,” Ed said.
“What’s the point of coming out here if we don’t get a deer?” Scott said.
Ed sat back in the driver’s seat of the car. The steering wheel had long been taken out. His rifle rested in his lap. When the deer came, Scott thought, he wouldn’t be able to get his rifle up without scaring them. The black-tailed deer he was after, a sub-species of mule deer, were common in the open areas around Northern Californian forests in August, and the racks of the males were as big as bicycles; the male deer dropped these large racks from January to March. They liked to eat the poison oak that grew in the foothills, the allergen content so annoying to humans bothered them not at all. The deer were mostly black in color and they hung out in clearings around forested areas. They used to be seen routinely from cars driving on rural roads when there was gasoline and regular petrol deliveries to the local convenience stores. With the war in its third year, the deer and the convenience stores had both disappeared. The cars were also gone, gasoline having long since becoming scarce and reserved largely for agricultural production and military use. For meat, there was little else to eat but deer and rabbits. A single black-tailed buck, active at dawn and dusk, would provide enough venison to feed Scott and his father for several weeks.
A thunderous clap echoed overhead as two F35 jets broke the silence on their way to bomb the resistance positions around Feather Falls above Lake Oroville. Scott watched them fly by, considered this, and then returned his gaze to the clearing. The war had left him behind. He was bitter about this, but now there was nothing he could do about it. He only wished he could get back into the war.
He saw movement in the manzanita brush; he pointed his gun and removed the safety.
“Is that…” Ed said a whisper.
“Quiet now.” Scott looked into the scope, putting the reticle at the point where he saw movement. As he watched, a buck with an eight-point rack wandered into the clearing, occasionally sniffing the air and grazing on the hay he had left. As he followed the deer in the scope, it scraped its antler against an oak tree. A doe followed him out, and then another one. Scott realized he was looking a month’s venison. His mouth watered.
“Shit,” Ed said, and moved his rifle toward the windshield
Scott fired, then quickly reloaded with the bolt action, and fired again. He got two of them, a buck and a doe, the third one escaping before Ed could get his rifle up. He put his rifle down, crawled out of the Chevy. A nice afternoon’s kill.
“Damn, you nailed them. Big sucker isn’t he?” Ed now spoke with a normal voice as he crawled through the windshield. “You gonna give me some right?”
“Shhh.” Scott listened to the wind; there were no sounds of other hunters or soldiers waiting to jump his kill. They would be in for a surprise if they did. Venison being as valuable as it was in this time of food rationing, desperate hunters could do some stupid things. The doe was dead, the buck thrashed about, disabled.
“You hear that?” Scott said.
Ed listened. “No.”
“There’s a jeep or truck coming up to your house.”
“No shit.” Ed turned and listened. After a minute, he heard it. “Sounds like a jeep.”
A jeep meant that the FDF was in the area and probably heard the shots. They would take the deer and throw them in the stockade for hiding firearms if they came up. Although they were fairly isolated, Scott couldn’t rule that out. He decided to chance it. They needed the meat. “Help me hang these deer.”
Ed and Scott tied up the hoof of the deer and drug them over the the oak tree by the car, which had hooks in it for this purpose. On the count of three, they lifted the bucks legs up and hung them so the deer was inverted, rack down toward the ground. Scott drew his hunting knife and cut the throat of the deer. Blood gushed out and onto the ground. Next they hung the doe.
Scott listened. No engine noises now. Maybe there wasn’t a jeep.
They waited until an hour after dark before they decided it would be safe to get Ed’s tractor to haul the carcasses back to his barn. There they could dress the deer out and split up the kill.
“I’m glad I got me a certified FDF sniper to hunt with. You never miss, do you Scott?”
“No, I never do.”
