Absolute Power

Chapter 1

"And where do you think you're going?" His father sounded angry yet again which was nothing new for him.

Rick thought it was obvious considering what he had on and what he was carrying. "Hunting. You approved this activity because it gave me a chance to feel the power of taking life," Rick reminded him. All that did was get his father to growl at him. Being told anything wasn't something he accepted from anyone and that included his son. Or more importantly, specifically his son.

"Except you never bring anything back." He went out hunting and never came back with anything to prove that he had killed anything.

"You wouldn't eat any of it if I did. Nor would Mother." The idea that he would eat a kill that he himself hadn't killed was beneath him. Far beneath him.

His father growled at him again. He really hated it when his son talked back to him. He needed to learn to be hard, but not hard to him. Not that he wanted him to be all mushy toward him. He was his son, not some weak female.

"Just make sure you kill anyone who is trespassing on our land," he ordered his son.

"You mean your land. And if you want them dead why don't you kill them," Rick said even though he knew the answer already.

His father wound up and hit him as hard as he could using the back of his hand. It caused Rick to lose his balance and stumble against the wall. He refused to touch his cheek even if it did hurt. Though he did look up at him and growl. He was getting close to taking all he could take from his father.

"That's right, get mad. Show me what you're made of." He was more than willing to rip his own clothes off and send his son to the hospital once more. He knew his son would recover, however it would teach him who was in charge around here.

Rick was saved from responding when his mother yelled, "JACKSON!"

It wasn't that his mother was any less hard on him since she wasn't. She also wasn't totally immune to his father's outbursts. But she was more likely to be spared than he was. It was just that she probably wanted something from his father. It allowed him to slip out the door. "I'll be back when I'm back, Father." Rick took off running for the nearby forest so he could get lost in it.

Having his mother need something turned out to be a blessing. As much as his father likely wanted to race after him and show him who was in charge one more time, having his mother need him for something spared him.

Rick was finally deep enough into the woods that surrounded their home that he stopped to look back. Even from there he could still see parts of the house. House. The the word didn't do it justice. It was a limestone mansion of just over twenty-one thousand square feet of living space and that didn't count the twelve car garage. Six garages on either side of the car courtyard. It had six bedrooms and six bathrooms. Not that anyone ever came to stay for a visit. Most everyone ran the second they were dismissed by his father. Regardless, each and every room was filled with furniture and well maintained, including his room.

There was a small separate building that housed the staff of six. They were required to clean every room daily and if they missed something either his father or mother would inform them of the error of their ways. None of them were allowed to quit. The only way to quit was to either leave in a body bag or become too old to work. Then they were thrown to the curb.

There was an airfield nearby that housed their personal jet, a Boeing 757 Jet Airliner, plus the house had its own helipad for an AgustaWestland Apache AH1 Helicopter. His father couldn't fly either of them so he had pilots for both who had no other job and were on call twenty-four hours a day and had one hour to reach their craft for a flight. The consequences of being late were severe.

As Rick went deeper and deeper into the woods he was betting his father was in one of the garages so he could play with his car collection. Rick had seen them but hadn't dared even touch them. He might be his son, but that didn't mean his father wouldn't skin him alive if he so much as left a hair on any of his precious and expensive car collection which currently consisted of a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO,a 1964 Ferrari 275 GTB/C Speciale,a 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 N.A.R.T. Spyder,a 1957 Ferrari 335 S, and a 1956 Ferrari 290 MM.

Then there was the space for six more cars on the other side. Inside those garages were: a Rhino GX with a 6.7L V8 diesel engine. It was bulletproof and could withstand the hit from any known RPG. It got used a lot when Jackson needed to travel even down to the air strip. AHolland & Holland Range Rover with a supercharged 5.0-liter V8, 550 horsepower. The interior had espresso and tan leather upholstery with French walnut veneers. A Karlman King thathad a Ford F-550 chassis, 6.8-liter V10. It boasted a retractable TV, refrigerator, pop-out tables and coffee machine. And an Aston Martin Rapide, 5.9-liter V12. It was a birthday gift to his mother, Martha, from his father, Jackson. It was the only one that was hers.

He hadn't really gone there to hunt. He got more than enough food at home. They had food from far and wide and all over the world. Neither his mother or father cooked, however the staff was pretty good. He had even spent a little time with them. They were the closest thing he had to what he could call friends.

Rick took a different route each time. This time he crawled up and over a large bank of boulders. Then he trudged up a stream for a while to disrupt his scent. His father might be able to follow him by scent alone. Though he wasn't doubting that if his father wanted to find him he would hire a team of dogs to track him down. What he would do to him after he found him was something Rick didn't want to think about.

His route was taking some time and it was going to be dark soon. So he backtracked to find that stream again. Then he found a clearing and dropped his backpack to fish out his tent. It didn't feel like rain but he chose not to risk it. So the rain fly went on the tent. He dug a trench all the way around his tent so that the rain would drain into the creek. He would love a fire except he was still too close to the house and a fire would be a beacon for his father, so he had a dark camp. He'd planned ahead and had brought something to eat that didn't require heating or refrigeration.

Once the sun was down he sat and listened to the sounds of the forest. The sound was soothing. At least until he heard something. That had him looking that way but he didn't hear, see, or smell anything. Still he thought it would be safer if he shifted. He went into his tent, stripped, and came back out naked. It took a few seconds and it hurt like hell, but soon he was in his animal form. This form had better eyesight, better hearing and better smell.

Bengal Tiger: the normal male tiger was about 3.6 feet at the shoulder and weighed about 490 pounds. Rick, though, came in at about 4.6 feet at the shoulder and weighed in excess of 610 pounds.

He wasn't really thinking of his father any longer even if his father's tiger was roughly his size. Rick listened, looked, and sniffed intensely. But whatever had alerted him in human form eluded him in animal form. He lay down but remained alert. While it might simply be some of the forest's wildlife, he wasn't discounting poachers being on his father's land. This place was definitely not his. His mother had some say in what the interior looked like, but mostly it was all his father. Still his father had one saving grace: he was always busy. He flew out and came back a lot.

Then he smelled something; he turned his head and sniffed even harder. It wasn't one of the house's guards. He didn't detect any metal from his weapon. In fact it was anything but that smell. It was enough that it had him up and moving slowly. If he was going to come up on it without scaring it away he needed to be careful. A small problem was his size, he wasn't small.

He stuck his nose to the ground. "Human!" It definitely wasn't wildlife. Whoever it was was moving carefully. He just didn't understand why. Unless… "Hunting for nocturnal wildlife"

He was happy with that since it meant he or she wasn't a poacher. Poachers went for large animals. Hunting at night was hunting for small animals. "Better not be after a skunk." He wasn't interested in smelling skunk all night and all day tomorrow.

Then he came across a smell of metal. He carefully looked around with his mind off of whoever it was. Then he found it. It was a metal trap. A small one. "They're checking traps." They weren't actually out there hunting.

He knew enough so he went back to his tent, lay down, and went back to listening, looking, and smelling while still a tiger. They looked to be heading away and not toward him so he felt safe enough. Finally satisfied, he shifted back into his human form and went into his tent to sleep.

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Come morning he broke camp and packed it all away save for some jerky to munch on as he walked. From there he chose to walk straight to where he wanted to go. It was going to take him the better part of the day to reach his destination but that was fine with him.

Along the way he checked one of his traps. The first one he found had been tripped but it was empty so he simply reset it. It had happened before so he thought nothing of it. It was meant for a small animal so he guessed a larger animal found it and tripped it. Though as he checked the ground he found a human footprint. In fact there were a number of them. "Hmm!" He looked around. "My visitor from last night maybe?" He checked the print again and found it was relatively fresh.

One of his father's guards or someone he sent to find him wouldn't be stealing game from his traps. "Unless he's out here living off the land." Suddenly his bringing his bow might mean something. "Except anyone my father would send would have a gun." A gun – especially a rifle – against a bow and arrow didn't sound fair. Not that his father cared about fair.

He moved on to the next one and this one was empty but still set. He also didn't find any human tracks. He left it and moved on to the next one. This one had a raccoon that looked like it had been there for at least two days. It was still live since its leg was caught and boy was it mad!

Rick pulled a knife and dispatched it quickly and mercifully. "Thank you for your life. You will be my evening meal tonight." He even had a tried and true recipe to use for it.

He pulled out a bag from his pack and got to work cleaning it and bleeding it right there. He was going to move his trap so he stayed right where he was. Once done he wrapped it up, picked up his trap, and continued moving.

He was getting really hungry so he started foraging for other things to eat. His dinner tonight was going to be big enough to satisfy his growing hunger.

He knew he was close when he spotted some of the stumps from the trees he had cut down. He had worked really hard not to cut down the trees in the area and end up clearing the area around it. He'd wanted trees in the area and not a large clearing. It had meant dragging trees a long distance in some cases, but it had been worth it.

Then he spotted it and it looked really good to him. It wasn't much, and it wasn't all that big, but it was his.

He had spent months cutting, chopping, and preparing the logs to be stacked. The real trick had been cutting the notches so one log would lock onto the next and so on. Then some grasses and mud filled in the gaps. Making the fireplace had taken even more work and had been first. He had used every rock in the area he could find to make it. The shocking part had been the front door – the only door for the entire place. He had cut down a tree and then sawed the boards to make it out of. He had no choice but to bring hinges and a door handle made of black iron with him from home. Hiding it had been easy.

He opened the door since it didn't have a lock and went inside. It was a simple one room cabin. The floor was dirt, sadly, but he couldn't get what he would have liked all the way out there without someone noticing. The roof was straw thatching and a careful look over the floor showed he didn't yet have a leak in it.

He had a shelf that held all of his canned food. His meal needed to be cut up first and he had a nice cast iron pot for that to go in. Once that was done he went to his bag to pull out the food he'd brought with him on this trip. Going to set it on his shelf, he noticed that he was missing food. It wasn't much, just one can, but still he noticed. That had him checking the floor for prints.

It took him no time at all to see that he'd had a guest. His pot hadn't shown any use so he checked his bed. It was clean enough to sleep on but it was just a bit off. "They slept in my bed." Now that pissed him off a little. The food he didn't mind. If someone really need food he didn't mind. But his bed? That was going too far.

That had him going back out the front door to look around. He didn't see anything amiss and didn't hear anything suspicious so he went back inside and closed the door.

His little cabin had two windows that he'd hauled there one at a time which had also been a pain in more ways than one. They were operable and since it was warm outside he opened them to get some cross ventilation.

Then he went back to making his dinner. One raccoon, deboned, one large onion, two stalks of celery, one large green bell pepper, four bay leaves, one can of cream of mushroom soup, one can French onion soup, salt and pepper, and water. He left it on the fire while he went to the closest stream to get a lot more water for tomorrow.

When he was back he worked out that he was going to have to do some chopping tomorrow so he would have more wood for the fireplace. He really didn't mind the work since he planned on staying there for a few days.

It began to get dark so he pulled out a lantern and lit so he could see to cook.

Once he was satisfied that the meat was cooked through and that it smelled pretty good, he broke up the fire a little so that it would just simmer and keep the pot warm for tomorrow. He didn't have a refrigerator or freezer so anything he cooked had to be eaten quickly. Dinner became breakfast and possibly lunch.

With bowl in hand he went outside, sat on the porch, and looked out into the forest. It was calm and peaceful and it was his. Well technically the land was his father's but the cabin was his. It was a really good place to just sit back and enjoy life away from his parents as well as away from all the politics.

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Rick woke to find his fire was almost out. He added what wood he had to it to build it back up so he could eat raccoon for breakfast. He also went outside with his axe to start chopping.

The only thing that slowed him down was finding enough to chop. He could and would cut down a tree somewhere. It was just that he couldn't use it in the fireplace since it was green wood and that meant it wasn't good wood. That tree would be next year's wood.

Still he needed to stop for breakfast and make sure it wasn't burning.

He was soon back on the wood patio that had a small amount of cover and looked out over his realm while he ate. It really was peaceful there. He knew he would need to go back eventually, back to his parents. He had a dream but he just didn't think he was ready for it yet. He really needed to ascertain just how much power his father had. Could he, or more accurately, was he able to chase him anywhere he went? He had a number of things in place but really needed to learn a few things before implementing his plan.

Since he was still hungry after walking there with little food and had done some chopping he went back inside for more and emptied his pot. He would clean it out later. For now he just wanted to enjoy his solitude and the quiet of the forest. It was peaceful.