Read Online Eden's War (A Distant Eden) by Lloyd Tackitt - Free Book Online

of the former United States Armed Forces, and was leading the war against China, he still had to produce his own food for himself and Linda. By design, the new Republic’s politicians garnered no salary of any kind. Adrian’s family and friends had taken up most of the slack, tending the fields and the stock during his absence, but the smokehouse meat was running low, so Adrian went hog hunting. Feral hogs had been a problem in Texas before the grid went down. That problem was now a blessing, a ready supply of delicious meat, although a dangerous animal to hunt.
    Going hunting also gave Adrian a brief respite from the grinding responsibilities he had unwillingly but dutifully taken on. A respite of but a few hours, but a few hours went a long way for him these days. He shed his politician life like a snake sheds skin. It was a huge relief to be on his own, in the woods again. He would have preferred to harvest smaller pigs because they were more tender and had better flavor, but with his time limitations he decided to kill one large hog instead. Borrowing one of Matt’s efficient hog rifles, he donned his moccasin boots and walked into the forest. Adrian knew of a grove of oak trees the hogs regularly came to for acorns, a favored food. It had a source of water nearby and was far from any settler or settlement. It was a hog magnet.
    The hogs had weak eyesight but made up for it with a keen sense of smell, so Adrian approached the oak grove from down-wind. He chose a tree between the southern edge of the grove and the water where they would eventually come to drink. Climbing the tree, he settled in for what he was sure would be a long wait, pleasantly surprised when a huge sow leading a dozen other feral hogs came trundling out of the oak grove almost immediately. They stopped here and there rooting around but were definitely heading for the water, and would soon provide an excellent opportunity for Adrian. Slowly shifting his position in the tree so that he would be able to shoot where he expected them to pass by, he smiled slightly. Almost too easy, he thought to himself.
    Within a few minutes the hogs were moving towards the water at a fast walk. Adrian lined his sights just behind the shoulder of the lead sow, waiting for it to be in just the right position, to be a quartering away shot so that the large caliber bullet would penetrate from behind the thick gristle carapace. The bullet from this gun would penetrate that shield readily enough, it had been designed just for that purpose, but Adrian had an instinctive drive to be as efficient as possible. As the hog passed by, Adrian squeezed the trigger. The large caliber rifle boomed out, shattering the peaceful quiet. The hog ran three feet and dropped.
    But just as the hog dropped the limb that Adrian was sitting on cracked and shattered, dropping Adrian twenty feet to the ground. He landed flat on his back, the wind driven from his lungs. He lay for a moment, fighting to remain conscious. The last thing he needed was to be unconscious with a pack of wild hogs nearby; they would eat him as fast as they would the acorns. Slowly he sat up, looking around for the rifle, grateful to find it near at hand. He picked it up just as he heard a crashing sound coming towards him from where he had last seen the hogs. They were stampeding as a result of the loud shot and crash of the falling branch, but in their confusion they were stampeding directly towards him. Looking up he saw a big boar with long, sharp tusks coming straight at him. Adrian was well aware of the danger he was now in, being on the ground with a wild boar was a bad bet all around. He rose to his knees, snapping the rifle up to his shoulder, and fired at the boar with a born rifleman’s instinctive shooting style. The huge slug tore through the boar’s head, blowing its brains outwards and backwards as the slug ripped on through boar’s spinal column shattering it as it traveled half way down its back. The boar