Escalation , livre ebook

Xlibris NZ - Mark Edmonds

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55 pages

English

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The story centres around one person and his response to a civil unrest situation that deteriorates to open anarchy. From living the dream, an off-grid lifestyle with his wife on their small but efficient block of land, to defending their property from marauding gangs. When Factions rise and develop enough power to take whatever they want, he won’t be pushed out. Taking his wife out off harms way, he returns to his home to defend his property. In a bush environment, where law and decency are secondary to survival, keeping ahead of the gangs becomes a lifestyle where innovative thinking and the will to keep going is vital to survival. As the gangs add more manpower and technology to the problem he’s causing them, he loses ground until a tactical retreat is required.
In a surprise medical twist, the entire political situation changes and he’s able to attempt a return trip however the situation has changed even more than he could ever have imagined and without any reliable information, is forced to move with great care through a countryside decimated by medical and political upheaval.

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Fiction

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Publié par	Xlibris NZ
Date de parution	24 janvier 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781669880219
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

ESCALATION

MARK EDMONDS

Copyright © 2023 by Mark Edmonds.

Library of Congress Control Number:
2023900856
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-8023-3

Softcover
978-1-6698-8022-6

eBook
978-1-6698-8021-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/24/2023

Xlibris
NZ TFN: 0800 008 756 (Toll Free inside the NZ)
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www.Xlibris.co.nz
847997
Contents
The Setup
The Scenario
The Escalation
The Setup

‘W e are now entering the seventh month of negotiations as the civil unrest continues to spread throughout the northern districts’. The voice of the radio news presenter continues to detail further conflict between protesters, government troops and police. The escalating riots are rapidly creating a war zone as the two sides descend into armed conflict, with both sides blaming the continued violence on each other.
For us, the locals who live here, it has become a real problem, with transport being disrupted, stopping deliveries of everything from food to fuel. No longer being able to buy groceries, we’re having to rely on produce from our vegetable gardens and stockpiled food from our freezers. Trade with close neighbours has kept us going, but as we begin to run out of supplies, it is becoming more and more difficult to keep food on the table. We have eggs, but without chicken food, the chickens are free-ranging, and we get fewer and fewer eggs as they stop laying in the henhouse. Seedlings for the vegetable garden have been unavailable since the riots began, and our stocks of vegetable seeds are rapidly dwindling. We’re leaving a percentage of our crops in to allow them to fully mature and develop replacement seed for next season, but that takes up space in the garden and won’t help with the immediate shortfall.
It has been six months since the grocery shop in our local town shut down and a week longer than that since we’ve had fuel. There has been no electricity for three months since the power companies stopped supply because of the number of unpaid accounts and the difficulties presented trying to maintain lines and substations in a region that can break into armed conflict at any time.
Fortunately, we were already living off grid anyway along with quite a few of our neighbours, so the lack of electricity hasn’t made much difference. Of the four or five neighbours we had, only one has stayed here, and all the rest left as things deteriorated, but for us, we have nowhere to go. Everything we have is here, and my wife and I have agreed we’re too old to start again.
We are far enough away from normal access that very few people know we’re here, and even then, it’s not easy to get here. Four-wheel-drive ATV is the only way to get in during winter, and nothing less than a four-wheel-drive ute or SUV is required during the dry months. A wet back fireplace supplies hot water, and solar panels and wind generators supply our power, with a diesel generator for backup. We have been running the generator on ‘black diesel’, filtered waste engine oil that also fuels our cars and the one diesel ATV we have.
Not that we go out much. It’s too dangerous. The last trip I attempted into town left me with four stitches and severe bruising when I got caught up in a shoot-out between rival factions fighting over a cow being slaughtered. Since then, any trips off-site have been at night and involve a shotgun, my dog Boyd and a lot of walking.
After six months of not being able to resupply anything, we’re getting short of lots of things and have run out of more. Gas for cooking on. We could cook on the woodstove and will have to sooner or later, but it’s a fire; it smokes. Nothing so obvious as a smoke cloud in the bush.
Soap. Hard to make but not impossible. Not very nice either. Dairy products. Can’t make them; they come from animals, and without animals, it can’t be done. Petrol, for the chainsaw to make firewood. Oil, any oil for fuel. All diesels, except some of the newer ones, will run on oil, waste engine oil, new engine oil, diff oil, cooking oil, power transmission fluid, steering fluid, even brake fluid.
We are going to have to go on a raiding mission and see what we can find around the district.
The Scenario

O ur twenty-five-acre property is located on the eastern side of a ridge, approximately ten kilometres southeast of a small town straddling a state highway. Access is via eight kilometres of small gravel road, in places only one lane wide. The road terminates immediately after crossing a one-lane bridge at a rundown woolshed and some stockyards. Another two and a half kilometres of bare clay track, two river crossings and a very steep hill gets to our boundary. The house is another few hundred metres into the bush from there.
We didn’t get many visitors when it was safe.
We’re hoping we’ll get none now.
Two or three kilometres south of our place is a state forest. West is a kilometre or so of farmland and then more virgin forest. A kilometre north is a bloody great hill, about a 150 metres above where we are, and to the east is a big valley stretching fifteen kilometres or so. In this valley, there are three close neighbours and four or five farther down, none of which we have vehicle access to. On the eight kilometres of road to get here, there are eighteen houses that we can get a vehicle to.
All are within walking distance during a night, including the return trip.
The choice of who gets our attention first is difficult. The three closest houses are almost as difficult to get to by road as our place, so chances are they won’t get searched and plundered until supplies become harder to get. Within 500 metres of the woolshed at the end of the road, there are eight houses, five of them down a private road. Another half a kilometre to the next house and a couple of kilometres farther on to a group of three. After that, it’s probably five kilometres to the next one. The houses down the private road should remain unnoticed for a while; they’re not visible from the road, and their access road has an open ford across a stream right at the start, so it looks more like a farm track than a road.
All these houses are on alternate power, so they should still have freezers and fridges running.
The next four houses are on the grid and won’t have power for a while, so it’s unlikely there will be anyone staying there. It is possible they’ve already been rolled, but it is probably the best place to start.
Having just escaped from my last encounter with some of the roaming groups of troublemakers, I have no intention of repeating the performance.
I have modified the exhaust on the diesel quad by adding a muffler off one of the four-by-fours I have up by my container. It is now very quiet and will get us close to the houses, hopefully without being heard.
Waiting until a drizzling night with some wind to stir up the trees, I set off, accompanied by my dog, Boyd, a Rhodesian ridgeback cross. I’d rescued him at nine weeks old from a council pound where he’d been placed after he, his mom and the rest of his brothers and sisters had been removed from their owners by council staff for animal cruelty. He was one of the last two to be rehomed and was going to be euthanised by the end of the week if I hadn’t taken him in.
I don’t know if a young pup can know how close he is to being terminated, but that boy looked at me with such utter trust and adoration then, and it’s never changed. From a tiny body with a huge head, he’s grown into a huge dog, at least fifty kilos, with slightly short legs, an effect of the lack of food at birth. It gives him a squat appearance, not unlike a bull terrier.
We don’t know what he’s crossed with, but he’s turned out black with all the ridgeback white markings, the five-pointed star on his chest and four white socks on his feet, as well as a perfect ridge with a double swirl just between his shoulders and down to the top of his hips.
And he still has that look when he looks at me.
We rumble as quietly as we can down the track with lights out. Although wet, the track isn’t in bad condition, probably because no one is using it, which is lucky because without headlights, I can see sod all. Reaching the woolshed intact, we head off up the road, still with no lights on, still unable to see much, but rather that than get a bullet from some hoodlum looking to make a name for himself. Along the flat, around the corner and past the private road and the first of the roadside houses. Carry on up the hill past the next house and into the steep corners up to the group of three houses.
I stop just before I can see the first of them. We’re about a hundred metres away around a corner. Dismounting, I bre