FULL NOVELXO Chapter CHAPTER FIVE
Attack!
The next morning, just at dawn, the police contingent from Chicago were waking from their night’s rest. There were no hotels thereabouts, and all had been forced to sleep in their cars after the long drive up. The soldiers pitched tents, and had cookstoves going on this brisk Spring morning, coffee brewing and pancakes cooking on long griddles.
Major Lee Anthony strode around in his polished boots and immaculate uniform, looking as refreshed as if he had slept at a Four Seasons hotel. Detective Gibbons looked rumpled and angry, having hardly slept at all on his car seat, and now the reporters were filming them all as they went about their morning routine, and Gibbons knew he looked really bad. Always an angry person, today he was downright bitter!
“Le’s go, Lee Anthony!” he sputtered. “I wanna get this sonofabitch and get the hell out of this horrid wilderness and back to civilization!” He said it as if to be in a pine dappled glade, with pristine air, and birds chirping in the trees was the worst place one could be- he really preferred the smoggy, choked, dirty streets of Chicago, with its out of control crime and corruption, to what really was, to any uncorrupted child of Nature, almost a wilderness paradise.
Lee Anthony shook his head. He had learned that Gibbons was not actually even worth answering back. He could appreciate a peaceful, beautiful scene, and for as long as he could do so, he would enjoy it. He sipped his coffee, and headed off towards his men, sitting at long portable tables set up for their breakfast. He just wanted to get this distasteful mission done, and then get away from that disgusting little detective, his whining, and the news crews. Heading the long way around, so as to avoid the cameras and reporters, he left, as Gibbons did precisely the opposite; rushing towards the cameras, pulling on his little tweed cap along with a twisted little ingratiating smile at the same time.
The cameras whirred, capturing the whole scene, transmitting it onto the airwaves live. Nora Gott was watching as the face of Antigone Gibbons, her new lover, was shown on her huge television screen. She knew he wasn’t much to look at, but this morning Anitgone looked positively haggard. Rough, but with a huge forced smile. She had ‘hooked up’ with him to advance her celebrity, and assumed he had done the same with her to advance his own. Each was using the other, but this morning, looking at him in the morning sunlight, speaking his pidgin black English on the TV- she thought she had decidedly got the worst of the bargain!
She was relieved when the cameras left Gibbons, and the moderator started talking about the morning’s plans. “The men are finished with breakfast, and are now forming up to enter the reservation where the notorious barbarian, Wulf Gott, is hiding.” Nora loved to hear her last name, each time it was spoken, it made her appear even more selfless in her condemnation of her own flesh-and-blood. She turned up the television sound, as did most of the citizens of the world at that moment.
There was a rough, gravel path entering the reservation, but huge logs and boulders had been piled up on it, blocking the entrance. The forest surrounding it, and beyond, was utterly silent. The soldiers led the way, led by Lee Anthony, marching together slowly towards the thick woods. Each carried a standard issue automatic weapon, and a side-arm pistol. Major Lee Anthony himself carried only a pistol, and a walkie talkie to communicate with his men. All twenty of them entered the darkness of the forest, perforce in single file, with Lee Anthony leading the way.
Behind them, much less in order than the soldiers, followed the police in their blue shirts, black pants, and shiny black hats and belts. They looked very much out of place against those woods, each carrying his automatic pistol and billy club in a holster. The television audience watched them gradually snake into the woods, one by one, until they had all disappeared from view.
Then, the news crews, the audience, and Detective Gibbons just…waited.
The first thing that Major Lee Anthony noted was how very dark it was in those woods. It was bright sunshine out at the camp they had left, but inside the reservation, it was like late evening twilight. The soldiers were clutching tightly to their automatic rifles, already spooked by the unfamiliar environment. There was a path, but it was scarcely larger than a deer trail through the forest.
Lee Anthony knew that it was just a mile or so from where they had entered to the village center of the reservation. Although he had argued with his superiors about invading what was, in effect, a sovereign, foreign nation, they had ordered that he do so. He had respectfully protested, on record, as Detective Gibbons sneered righteously behind him. ‘That little joke of a man…’ he had thought to himself at the time.
He expected a resistance, but in the face of all the manpower and weaponry he had at his disposal, he knew it would be futile-
At that moment, a group of painted warriors leaped out before him and his men. Perhaps at least 60 native warriors was his guess, and they were carrying- long knives, and bow and arrows?? In the forefront stood the one white warrior, a giant of a man- Wulf Gott!
But this was not the respectful, huge but clean-cut looking young man he had seen on the TV and in magazines, with his long tawny hair and bright blue eyes. This was a wild looking fighter, a leader of warriors defending their homeland, and he looked downright savage- his face, like those of all of his men, was painted in bands of deep blue and black, and his eyes were blazing with righteous anger.
He shook his head, this would be a regrettable slaughter. Raising his arm, he shouted an order to his men, who had spread out behind him. “Fire!!” he called. He waited, anticipating the fall of the bodies, the instant waste of the primitive men who stood before him, deluded into thinking they had a chance.
He continued to wait, as there was not a sound of gunshots in that dark forest. All of those many automatic rifles, and all of those police with their regulation pistols behind them, although raised, cocked and fired- the result was nothing! Just a lot of audible “clicks” as the firing pins were struck as the triggers were pulled, over and over and over…
Then, with a scream of rage, Wulf and his band leaped forward. One group moved to the side, and started strafing the soldiers with arrows, which dropped rank after rank of them. Wulf led the rest in a headlong, vicious attack, slashing with their long knives at those who were left.
The soldiers dropped like harvested corn, trying vainly to use their rifle butts as clubs to fight back, but their hand-to-hand skills were nothing to those of the tribesmen. Lee Anthony watched as Wulf leaped onto the back of one soldier, who swung up his rifle in a panic. Landing on the soldier’s back, the youth swiftly cut his throat with his longknife as that unfortunate crumpled under Wulf’s weight to the earth, and then the barbaric youth slashed to his right even as they were falling, impaling another through the heart.
As this was going on on the ground, the Major looked up- there was the helicopter coming to save them! It had multiple machine pistols, and was almost invulnerable. In relief, he watched as it entered the invisible border that marked the edge of the Ojibwe Nation reservation… and in utter disbelief, he further watched as the copter, instantly failed, just as his troops guns had not worked within the borders of the reservation, so the copter just- stopped.
There was no gunfire, in fact the blades of the propellors just stopped revolving- and the helicopter just dropped like a stone! It caromed off the trees as it fell, and aside from the brief screams of its occupants, there was nothing further than the noise of it striking, and then the blast of flames and explosions as it hit the earth, and exploded!
The carnage was quick, devastating, and total. Lee Anthony watched in disbelief as his men were cut down, and his last vision was of the barbarian Wulf Gott, lifting a man up by his crotch, and smashing him down to the ground with a broken back. Wulf’s face was like that of a hunting panther, teeth bared and grimacing- and with that, a native warrior appeared just before the Major. Lee Anthony had been pulling the trigger of his pistol, over and over, in kind of a futile horror, when this native grabbed the weapon and struck him violently across the temple. Blackness enveloped him.
It was evening, and deep in that forest it was darker than a usual night. Major Lee Anthony had awoken, his head throbbing, but otherwise he felt alright. He was tied to a post, and felt curiously impotent, as if he had fallen asleep in modern civilization, and awakened at the dawn of human history.
A large fire was blazing, ringed with teepees and small log structures. Scores of native Americans were about that fire, painted and waving their knives and bows in a kind of celebration. In their center, stood a massive, white warrior, painted as were they, with a long knife in his fist, and his other fist raised in the air in victory. By his side stood a tall, lean native, with snow-white, long straight hair flowing to his shoulders. He was not painted, but wore a headdress of eagle feathers, and a bright necklace of jade and turquoise about his gaunt neck. His dark eyes glowed with vitality.
A woman approached him. She was beautiful, with skin the color of cafe au lait and long, straight black hair. Her eyes radiated sympathy, and she rubbed a damp cloth over the bruise upon his temple.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we are fighting in self defense. I’m sure you will not be harmed.”
At this point, another black person entered the Major’s vision, that of a youth, strong looking and vital. He, too, was painted in the blue and black of the tribe.
“Hey, man- but yo don’ know what yo is messin wif!” This young person looked at him with clear eyes, and with an intelligent expression. He talked ghetto, but he seemed quite intelligent, and not without empathy. “Don’t worry, man, Wulf and the medicine dude, they ain’t got nothin’ ’gainst brothers!” And off he went, running towards the fire.
Lee Anthony saw the youth appear next to Wulf and the medicine man, and point towards where he was bound. Wulf nodded, and he and the medicine man made their way over, as the celebration continued about the fire. The savage, fierce face of Wulf, vicious looking in its paint, looked down at him as he sagged in his bonds upon the post. The medicine man looked at him as well, and it seemed to him with sadness.
“What is happening??!” asked Major Lee Anthony, who felt as if he were wakening from a bad dream into a worse.
The young dark woman spoke in answer, again wiping her damp cloth on his feverish forehead. “You have pursued us into our last resort. I am Trina, and am from Chicago, but rescued by this man,” she nodded towards Wulf, “and we only want to escape from your civilization. But you attack us, here, where we are no threat to you, and seek to destroy our way of life. Wulf and Akula, the medicine man here, have assured me that no harm will come to you, but you must not resist.”
At this point, the black youth, wiry and strong looking, approached the group with a keen eyed stare. “What she mean, bro, is be a good boy, and we gonna get along just superfine!”
“That’s enough, Jafiro,” said Wulf in a deep voice. “This man, indeed all of those men we have slain were good soldiers, following orders. But the orders were evil!” Wulf’s visage glowered of a sudden, a mask of hate appeared momentarily, which then fled all at once.
“But,” said Lee Anthony, “why didn’t our weapons work?” Then, perceiving what he had said, he wished he had not been so blunt. But the tribespeople took no offense.
Akula answered. “My spells, coupled with the will of the Great Spirit, both of my people and your own, sufficed to render this reservation, this sovereign nation that your superiors decided to attack and defile, immune to modern machines and weapons. No machines will operate here; neither will weaponry or machinery. Only the strength and power of a man’s hand can prevail here, and so it shall remain forever!” His eyes, glowing with vitality and with deep flecks of gold within their depths, emphasized the impact of his words.
“Now,” said Akula, “we have no wish to harm you. Give us your word, as a warrior, that you will not try to escape or harm any of our people, and you will be allowed to sleep in a hut tonight, as a free man!” And as he nodded his agreement, Wulf took his long knife and cut his bonds. He stretched as circulation returned to his arms.
“Hey man,” said Jafiro. “Yo can crib wif me tonight! I ain’t hold no grudge, but I did kill me a few o’ yo soldiers dude!” And putting his arm around the shoulders of the Major, Jafiro led him over to the campfire. Before long, after the black youth had given him a wineskin a few times, the Major was feeling really sleepy. He felt bad about his men, but the celebration about the fire was fun to watch, with dancing and singing, and the fire felt warm upon his face. He fell asleep.