Last Stand: Patriots (Book 2) by William H. Weber

Author:William H. Weber [Weber, William H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Alamo
Published: 2014-08-11T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

While he was gathering wood and tinder, a whoosh nearby followed by rustling told John that his trap had sprung. Hopping to his feet, he rushed to find a possum hanging off the ground with the picture wire cinched around its neck. He put the creature out of its misery quickly with the BK9 and then skinned and gutted it on the stump of a fallen tree. He took care to do this a few meters away from his camp to avoid attracting scavengers. While most people tossed the entrails into the bush, John kept them to use as bait for fishing and future traps.

A stagnant pond sixty meters to the west of his camp would provide his drinking water. Usually that would be arduous work, building a filtering system and then something to boil the water in. This was where his Lifesaver water bottle would come in handy. John normally liked to keep things as natural as possible—relying on gizmos in a survival situation was all too often a recipe for disaster—but after watching murky, undrinkable water at the Patriot camp go in and clean, safe water come out, he’d been convinced. The other advantage was the ultra-fine fifteen-nanometer filter that kept out all waterborne pathogens. So far as he could tell, the major drawback to the thing was the inability to tell when the water filter was nearly done. Given that it could treat over a thousand gallons and he’d only just started using it, he was confident he had all the water he would need.

After building a small fire and cooking the possum over a spit, John removed the duct tape from the heels of his feet to let them breathe. He was listening to the sounds of the forest, his AR by his side and his shotgun waiting for him in the A-frame shelter.

There was something about the trees here that reminded him of the lush hilly forests in Rwanda. The vast majority of folks might have had difficulty placing the tiny country on a map before the genocide of 1994. That was when the whole world saw horrifying images of gangs of machete-wielding men hacking at anyone they could find. The war had started as a tribal conflict between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis. But it wasn’t long before the lust for blood on all sides had turned into a killing free-for-all.

At the end of ’94, John had entered the ravaged country as part of the humanitarian mission, Operation Support Hope, and the sights he’d seen there were nearly beyond description. That was when he’d fully understood how sheltered they were here in the West. For John, however, this wasn’t a reason for condescension. Rather, it was a hallmark of how safe life was in America. At least, the way it used to be.

John recalled searching in the village of Gahini for a local doctor named Mutsinzi. There was a young girl with gallstones who needed treatment and the doctor there was reputed to be the best in the area.

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