"Not on my watch."
Chapter Fifty
Thunder in the Mountains…
Thunder in the Mountains stood at the end of the line. Twelve of them out here, holding against the foes. They had a shooting line with a pair of guns on the flanks.
They were watching, waiting, and backing each other up.
“We’d better not go too deep.” He shouted, and the eight men and three women held up.
“There’s one.”
Ka-boom. Ka-boom. He blasted away with his pump-action shotgun, but it skittered away into the bushes. His shoulder pounded with a delicious ache as he watched over his party.
“You missed.” Washington George told the man to his left.
“He’ll be back.” Came a terse reply.
Gordon Whitecomb was a good shooter. Not like him to miss.
“The end of my gun seems awful heavy.” Gord replied in answer to his unspoken thoughts. “Got to really drag it up there, now.”
All of them were tiring. They couldn’t keep this up forever.
Chief George found it exhilarating. But there were moments of stark terror, like when three massive creatures came zooming in on the flank. All they could do was to circle back in behind, and retreat, turning and shooting as they went. Luckily, when all guns were brought to bear, it was enough. One massive carcass, and a couple of heavy blood trails showed that.
“Here they come.” Yelled Cleve.
Pop-pop-pop, ka-pow, ka-pow, on and on and on like thunder in a winter snowstorm.
More of the creatures writhed on the ground, and he waited for a moment.
“Big one to your right.” Someone bellowed, and he turned with his partner and they both blasted it at close range. It skidded up to a halt, almost hitting them as they hastily backed away.
Cleve shot it again, then put the gun down to clear a breech.
“Damn.”
The chief clicked his weapon closed, and watched the animal painfully drag itself away. This one was a goner.
“All right, how’s the ammo?” Gordon’s voice called from the left.
“Not good.” Another voice.
“Anybody hurt?” He heard.
Four or five quick voices all said, “No.”
“We’d better withdraw while we can.” Cleve’s quiet and confident voice, sounded at his ear in suggestion.
Chief George, or Thunder in the Mountains to his closest friends, agreed.
“I think you’re right. All right people, we’d better back out the way we came. And let’s boogie because those things are really unhappy right now.”
Without instruction, two pairs formed up an advance party, with a small group in the middle like a circle, and the pair of Chiefs in the rearguard position. They stayed ten metres back from the ring of the main group. The vehicles were fifty metres away. And a hundred metres on the other side of that, it was the first block of the Nauvoo neighborhood, with at least a hundred homes, filled with old folks, young mothers, infants, and school-children.
Somewhere off to the northeast, maybe a kilometre and a half away, he heard the rattle of gunfire. He realized there were snowflakes touching the tip of his nose, cold and wet.
Suddenly the chief spun around. The timing felt good, or bad. It was an impulse.
He waved the gun in the air, and leapt in a kind of heathen, savage joy.
“Ea-aa-eaugh-ugh.” He shouted to the trees. “Yah-yah-yaaaah-hh-ah.”
He sucked in a huge breath and shouted as he had never in his life shouted before. He shouted so loud he could feel the tissues tearing inside of him.
“Come and get it you mother-fuckers.”
Suddenly all the group were doing it.
Provoked, the lizard-people struck suddenly and the group was firing again.
Boom-boom-boom-ka-pop-kapow, bangedey-bangedey-bang.
It was over as suddenly as it began, the thin smoke clearing in the early morning breeze. A thin blue line of dead and dying creatures writhed in the underbrush.
The line held. His chest heaved with the emotions, the rush of blood in his veins coursing through him like life itself. Where were the bad knees and sore hip now? Chief George grabbed the arm of a man knocked off his feet, but hopefully not too badly hurt.
“Johnny. Get your buddy to the trucks and start them up, all of them. Watch his back.”
He watched them go. Gordon and Cleve covered their backs while the others waited, eyes front.
“Here they come again,” someone reported.
“Brace yourselves.” Then he started his war cry, yipping and yelling at the enemy.
In his mind’s eye, just for one brief second, he saw it all. It was a vision, of another time and place, against another enemy. For one brief moment of time, he knew this was how his great-great-great-grandfather had lived and died. This was how he had fought at the Battle of the Fallen Timbers.
His warrior’s heart reached out through time and space and touched him.
And it was good.
"Giant mutant salamanders, you say--"
A picture formed in his mind, the face of a man he had never known.
The magical power coursed through him, animating him with a joy like he had never experienced.
His heart flashed with fire and song.
“Noongom nwii-nib.” He sang out into the trees. “It is indeed a good day to die.”
“Kill all of the creatures,” he shouted, face all stiff and wooden with anger and outrage.
And then, bizarre in sound and tone: “Not on my watch, you little fucking varmints.”
He had never felt such anger. He had never before had the chance to let it all out. He saw that now.
For a brief moment of time, they were laughing together as one, facing death side by side and shoulder to shoulder, in the cold, damp woodlands of their home.
END
Wow, man, that is so groovy. Also, Louis is on ArtPal.
Images. Louis. He steals them from the internet.
Louis has books and stories on Kobo. He also has some art on ArtPal.
Thank you for reading.
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