Reversion - Black Hands Novella

By E. E. Winston IV

Alec Leak is an antisocial loner, living in the mountains of what used to be known as Southern Montana / Northern Wyoming, just outside a valley containing the newly founded town of New Hope. Alfred Nash is the town doctor. The two must join forces to help save the town from a group of vicious raiders who have murdered their mutual friend in front of his family.
They turn from defending heroes to escaping prisoners as they’re taken to the headquarters of Colin Romilda, the leader of the raiders. Things take a very shocking turn when they begin executing their plan for escape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329025127

Book preview

REVERSION

BLACK HANDS NOVELLA

By

E. E. WINSTON IV

Consulted on and edited by

Jacob S. Limon

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COPYRIGHT 2015 by E.E. WINSTON IV,

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ISBN: 978-1-329-02512-7

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Visit the author online at:

e-iv-books.tripod.com

PROLOGUE

There were no longer any living memories of the war. Recorded history had been reset. Cities and corporations completely evaporated. The bombs wiped out almost every free standing structure across North America. The ones that were left were in ruins with most of them being in the southwest. Worldwide communications were all but lost after years of living underground in massive shelters, designed to house a dozen families. The few survivors could no longer rely on abundant oil to power their lives as the oil resources had already been running low before the war. As the last of the canned food and bottled water had been consumed, and thus began the re-taming of wild America. Some started farming with the seeds that were stored in the fallout shelters. Others founded small nomadic societies of hunters. Small towns were built where great cities once stood. Rivers regained their importance as the centerpieces of survival.

Radiation decays, it doesn’t ever disappear. As a result, there are numerous radioactive hot-zones that living animals stay away from and plants refuse to grow in. Some species of plants and animals had even mutated forming new ones, and some seeds which were planted didn't quite grow the way the old books said they would. Some were bigger, others changed colors, and some didn't grow at all. Because oil had become extinct gas vehicles slowly lost their utility. As a result carts that had to be pulled by animals resembling the horses or oxen of the old days made a comeback. Large wagons were the popular choice for families and merchants. Most people walked or rode horses. However, these horses aren’t the same horses from the old books. They are bigger, meaner, and they have jaws similar to that of dogs; and like dogs, they’re loyal. In a way, these horses were newer, more versatile dogs. If you owned a horse, you didn't have to worry about anyone or anything attacking you while it was near.

Life was quiet, especially in the river basin of about 120 miles in what used to be known as Southern Montana. The valley was about half of the basin and it followed a stretch of an unnamed river for about sixty-five miles. There were rumors of someone uncovering ancient tracks and building new ones for steam trains, but that was outside the Basin and no one who lived in the valley truly knew about anything about life outside the basin.

Bands of raiders ran all throughout the Basin. They were mostly groups of nomads who turned to plundering to survive when food couldn't be found. Because people didn’t know which Nomads to trust even the Peaceful Nomads were persecuted. Farmers refused to trade with them, but there were a few people who negotiated trades on their behalf. Ignorance has and always will be a major flaw of mankind.

Alec Leak didn't care how people lived their lives, as long as it didn't interfere with his. The farmers, miners, and townspeople feared the raiders, but the raiders feared him.

Along the rivers where the farmers were beginning to irrigate crops, there were stories about a mountainside fortress to the south. These stories were told to children to explain the gangs of boogeymen raiders living in the mountains, since they were too young to understand the evils of men. Like most things in fairy tales people didn't even believe the fortress existed.

The town of New Hope was growing steadily with two bars, a general store, a small hotel, and a residential area with a few small homes to house those who didn't live where they worked. They also thought they were the center of the universe as it was the only town that was more than just a few temporary shacks built by hunters in the woods.

CHAPTER ONE

My office was next to the hotel. The crudely made, hand painted sign said Doctor Alfred Nash. I arrived a few years after the founding of New Hope, just after I left my uncle's mine with a small library of medical and first aid books our ancestors saved from the fires of war.

The town was founded by the late Dennis Oluwaseun. He built the hotel as a place for the farmers, miners, and hunters to get together to trade goods. Then Brody Archibald opened a bar across the road. Shortly after that Violette Fiorella opened her general store next to that. The road was affectionately called Main Street, even though it was a trail that ran the full length sixty-five mile length of the valley that followed the river, farms, and mines close to it. New Hope was at the center of it all. As the town started to boom, the residents decided to elect a governess and appointed a sheriff to police the valley.

New Hope sat nestled against a steep hillside along the river, where the grandparents of the founders first left the fallout shelters. It was safe from the raiders, but the farms and mines outside were constantly terrorized. The town needed the farmers, miners, and hunters to keep it stocked with essentials and to patronize the local businesses. The problem was with everyone spread out for miles they could not protect them at all times. This was a time of survival though, so these people weren't easily victimized. The weak didn't last very long.

CHAPTER TWO

Alec Leak grew up listening to his grandparents tell stories of living in underground shelters and their first times seeing sunlight. He played in the abandoned fallout shelters as a child before New Hope started filling them in. The rest of the community wanted to forget they crawled out of holes like animals, so they buried the past. Only the closest of family shared their history. It wasn't talked about outside the hierarchy of the home.

Alec grew up on a farm that was built to distract raiders from a gold mine hidden in the hills. His family never got to see any of the gold as the mine collapsed early on, injuring his father and older brother. They were brought into my office, but it was too late to save either of them. His brother, Henry, died on the back of the wagon shortly after leaving the mine. His father, Thomas, died in my office from internal bleeding a few hours after arriving.

The first time I met the man who would later save my life, I had to explain to him why I couldn't save his father's. He was a child then.

He left the family farm as a teenager and lived alone in the hills in an abandoned shelter he found on a hunting trip with his father and brother. They had carved their names on the wall that day, in a room he avoided going into as an adult. He didn’t go in the room for no reason other than out of respect for his father and brother. He would rather leave the room untouched than soil it with any presence other than that his father and brother left in it.

He supported himself by hunting, fishing, and farming only what was necessary to survive. He collected water from the rain and rivers to drink; purifying and filtering it by boiling it in an old one-gallon tin can, with a coiled copper tube funneling the steam out. It dripped out of the end of the tube slowly, taking almost half an hour to fill a canteen. Life was tedious and slow, but that's how he wanted it. He stayed busy just so he could get through the day.

Getting to New Hope required walking east for a full day, making camp for the night, then going south and getting to town by noon the next day. The trip itself didn’t bother him, he avoided traveling to the town simply because he didn’t like to be around people. It was a trek through the territories of dangerous animals until he reached the valley. The valley was no safer, for most people, than the hills and trees. Raiders waited to ambush anyone travelling towards town. Farmers and miners believed anyone they didn't immediately recognize was a raider, attacking them with whatever weapons they could get. It was usually arrows and spears, but there was a few simple firearms scattered throughout the Basin. Guns were banned in town, and most of them were in the raiders' possession anyway.

Alec had two of them, both with heavy kickback. One was a tactical double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun, with Stoeger engraved on it, which was always securely strapped on his back. He took it off the body of a raider he found in the valley. The other gun was a Desert Eagle fifty caliber that he found a few years ago in a shelter on the west side of the mountains. The firearms were essential even though his weapon of choice was the eight inch Bowie Knife his father gave him.

Ammunition wasn't an issue as he had found the Eagle in a stockpile of other smaller caliber guns, and cases full