Covid Wasteland
Chapter Three - Skirmishes
Sailing Vessel Orion was a Hunter-44, a flush-deck boat with a very tall mast known as a “fractional-rig”. For a sailboat that big, it didn’t sleep but four, but that made little difference. It did have a small wood stove for heat and some cooking on board, though, and Katherine set herself to work preparing fish. There were some potatoes available, so she took some fish-fins and started on her soup. She sent SSgt Steward ashore to get some more wood for the stove, because she would be running it for a while, that fish-soup didn’t cook fast. The Skipper, Max Auerbach, came back with him and approved of the new ship’s Cook! Max kept looking at the clock, and at midnight, he turned on his shortwave radio and spent a half-hour listening to various stations around the country. It seems that quite a few ocean-capable sailors had abandoned their luxury homes for their yachts, and there was a network on both Coasts of these guys and the one or two females, and they kept each other advised on things via their Single Sideband radios, which had global reach when the sky-waves cooperated. While he was talking, and using up to twenty amps from his batteries, he watched the instruments for his mast-mounted wind generator. Not great, it was only charging five amperes, so he told SSgt Steward to set up a crew duty of pumping the stationary bike up on deck, which had a 250-watt generator for just this instance: no solar, little wind and a battery drain. John took the first trick and his wife popped up there to cheer him on in between tending her food on the stove. The Skipper and the Staff Sergeant went over a chart of the Longview area, to familiarize themselves with places they could land. They needed to plan landings at about three places in case of unfriendly people. The water needed to be about ten feet deep, as the Hunter’s keel drew over seven feet.
After three, everyone got a few hours of sleep. At eight, they had a meal, then warped out into the river at ten and set sail. A down-river East wind had set in, the tide was at fast ebb, so they made very fast progress, almost ten miles per hour over the ground, and they made Kalama before noon. Katherine did contact the Tribe then, and were told that the Warriors wouldn't be at the river until two. The skipper ordered sail taken in to slow down and Katherine made up another meal to feed everyone, fish AND soup. At one pm, the Bridge came into view, and the Skipper spent a lot of time glassing it with his best binoculars. He called over SSgt Steward and he looked at it. There was something new, it looked like some sort of structure had been built about in the middle of the bridge. They decided to have Katherine ask the Tribe about that. She called them up and they told her it was a criminal gang, and they were charging a high toll for crossing AND they were trying to charge tolls to River traffic also. John asked for the radio and she gave it to him.
“Cowlitz Control, do you have any contact with the Longview Militia?” Control responds.
“Affirmative, Orion, we have one of their people with us now.”
“Any chance that Militia can get together with us and your warriors to remove that threat from the bridge?”
“Orion, we’re working that now between our War Chief and that Militia. If we show up in force, though, they will just cross the bridge into YOUR territory unless you can bring enough force to stop that.”
“If we land in Rainier, we have 4 guns, with 3 rifles. If we can find any of OUR Militia, we ought to be able to get them between us and destroy that gang, over.”
“Orion, that’s affirmative. For your force, set up to take out the bicycles they will ride off the bridge when we show up. They will have a long downhill, so they will be moving fast, over”
“Okay, Cowlitz, we know how to handle that tactically. Any idea of when you will be ready to move on them from your side?”
“Two hours, Orion.”
“That works, we’ll need a little over an hour.”
“When you hear the first shots, we’re shooting at them, they will be in your face five minutes later.”
“Okay, we won’t shoot until they are close to us.”
“Okay, Orion. Best of War-Spirit to you.” John handed the radio back to Katherine, who put it up to her mouth and uttered a throat warble, and they heard one back!
The Skipper was already headed for the Rainier dock. When he was almost there, he started his diesel auxiliary and entered the City Marina on that power. His motor wasn’t running long, he probably only burned a quart of fuel. Katherine and Mickey tied up the yacht, and then they hear a familiar sound, the Captain’s bicycle-bell! At the head of the dock, he pushed his machine down the ramp to the floating docks and there were two more men behind him. All three of them slung M-4 rifles. John began to exult, just a bit. Their total force was probably at least a dozen now, maybe more. The Skipper came up with a large coil of light wire rope, the material for his mast-stays. He met the Captain and handed the cable over to him, and some tools, and the Captain and two of his men took off for the bridge to set up their deadly trap, a neck-high wire stretching all the way across the two lanes of the bridge. They didn’t come back for an hour, but then they took off with Mickey and John trotting along on foot. It was about a half-mile to the bridge and John was glad Katherine had fed him well. They strung the cable then he put two men each behind concrete abutments about 150 feet down-bridge from the snare-wire.
They didn’t have long to wait, maybe ten minutes, then they heard shooting from across the bridge. At first, they couldn’t see anything because of the arch of the bridge, but then they saw smoke blowing. It appeared that the Cowlitz force had set fire to the mini-fort the bandits had built on the bridge. John looked over at the Captain, who gave fist-pumps and held up two fingers, meaning a short wait now. They saw the first riders, three men and they had to be moving thirty miles an hour downhill. They were in a line abreast and none of them saw the wire until they were into it. Two went down, their heads almost severed, with huge and instant blood loss, and the third scalped himself on the wire, but was still moving when Mickey broke cover, ran over to him and slit his throat. John looked up the bridge, but saw no more riders and he broke cover, met Mickey and the two of them tossed the scalped guy over the rail, about 45 feet to rocks below, then his bicycle joined him. His rifle and ammo stayed behind. The Captain and his man did the same thing, twice, with the last two bodies. The Captain hadn’t quite gotten back behind cover when the next group of four riders came into view. These guys used their brakes and slowed down. The Captain gave the “stay down” signal and he himself ran right down the highway towards the end of the bridge. This caused the riders to speed up and suddenly there was a tangle of bodies as they all crashed into the wire and each other, not being as spread out as the first bunch. The Captain turned, knelt and began slow-fire into the knot. A shot came back, but only that one bandit was firing. The Captain yelled and charged. The other three began firing at the clump of bodies in the middle of the highway fifty meters away. The one bandit shooting now stopped. The four Militia advanced at Rifle Ready, but neither of the two living but wounded bandits were capable of resistance. Mickey handed his rifle to John and started cutting throats and thirty seconds later was done with his grisly work. Only one rifle and two handguns on those four bandits. Mickey checked, and the rifle was out of ammo. Then they heard a cry and looked up, seeing four horse-warriors approaching in a canter. The Captain said softly to sling arms, and they did, except for Mickey, so he was holding his bloody knife when the riders came up and dismounted. Three native men and one Native woman. She looked around and her gaze settled on Mickey. She dismounted and walked over towards him, stopped six feet away and lowered her head.
“My Warrior, you have counted much coup. I am Constance Otter.” The Chief was already talking to the Captain. The War-Chief related as to how they had killed three outright, and two more burned in the building, the rest escaped. Constance Otter now went with Mickey, looked over the side, crossed to the other side, looked over, debased herself again, and then shouted at her Chief.
“Seven, they got seven here, my Chief.” The Captain turned to the Chief.
“Do you have any casualties, Chief?”
“We don’t, but one Militia troop got burned mishandling a fuel-bomb. He will be okay, my Medicine-woman is with him. I don’t know about that “Militia”. They sent two people. We were facing a dozen. I’m not happy. Say, where is Katherine Otter?”
“She stayed with the Captain of our sailing boat. Let’s dump these bodies over the rail and go down to our ship.” They dumped them, but then the Chief had Constance Otter say the dead-enemy prayer just once, to release the Spirits of the dead foe. The Captain and his two men rode off towards town on their bikes, and Constance and Mickey doubled up on her horse and John on the Chief’s horse. They were in no hurry, so it took them about fifteen minutes to get back to the boat. A surprise awaited them. Two more dead people on the ramp to the docks, and down at the boat, one prisoner of war, a woman. The Skipper explained.
“Captain, we were minding our own business here, when these three came down and demanded food. I told them no, and they pulled knives. Katherine here killed both of them, face to face. The woman gave up and we didn’t kill her YET.” The Chief smiled.
“Under our Custom, she is Katherine’s war-slave. If Katherine doesn’t want a Slave, she can give her away, sell her or kill her. What is your choice, Katherine Otter?”
“I will keep her, if she will work hard. If not, I will kill her.” The Chief continued.
“You have to mark her then. First, put a slave collar and kill-ball on her neck.” Katherine got busy, and using some latigo that the other warriors gave her, she fashioned a permanent neck-collar and five-foot leash tied to it. The woman’s wrists were then tied to a latigo belt and they hobbled her with ankle-ties and a 18” hobble-strap. They had nothing suitable for the jugular kill-ball though. Katherine took her below while the men were talking, and Constance was bathing her Warrior-Mate over on the beach. She WAS impressed when she got him naked, then when she washed him in cold river water, his prominent baby-maker only shrank a little! They all heard the slave scream, twice, as Katherine Otter burned the prominent “X” into her chest and another, smaller, one on her neck. Up on deck, the Chief looked over at Constance Otter and Mickey. They were both dressed now, but were doing a “long good-bye” with much hugging and a deep, deep kiss. They came back to the boat, and the Chief came up to them, putting out his hands to Constance Otter.
“You seem to have chosen this Warrior, my young Otter. Has he agreed to have you as his wife?” Mickey seemed tongue-tied for a moment, but then said “I do, my Chief” and that was all it took. Now Mickey had to reach down and get his wife off the deck where she had prostrated herself to him. They all heard a “Yip” from the hatchway, and Katherine stood there with her arms raised, praying her thanks to the Great Spirit for finding her daughter such a fine husband. Next, Katherine gave her daughter a job, to clean up her Slave, who smelled like she hadn’t bathed in a year. Constance walked her off the dock to the beach, removed her clothing and pushed her into the river, using handfuls of sand to scrub her. She left the filthy clothing on the beach, tied the Slave back up and brought her aboard the boat. Constance fed her some fish soup while the Captain motored out of the Rainier Marina and over to Longview Grain Terminal, where he tied up the boat and now they waited for their Cowlitz-Nation cargo to arrive. John and Katherine fished, and caught some catfish and a small sturgeon. The catfish went into the soup pot with more potatoes, and Constance took a bucket, gave one to Mickey, he slung his rifle and they went foraging along the dock. They found what they were looking for, some sprouted wheat, a lot of it, and Constance carefully up-rooted it and put it in the buckets. After an hour, the buckets were full, and they walked back to the Orion. Constance fed the Slave some more soup, and the nourishing food brought tears to the woman’s eyes. Having your life saved, even to be a Slave, was worth tears of thanks.
Now the Cowlitz Warriors returned with the cargo. There were a bunch of rag-tag whites pushing a line of carts. Constance whispered to Mickey.
“They’re slaves. We captured them in battle, like my mother captured her slave-woman.” Several carts were stacked up with 5-gallon plastic fuel jugs, some with a scribbled “D” on them, some not. Some ammunition cans for both military calibers, 5.56 and 7.62. A few bales of plastic tarps and now at the last, tools for working the land. Shovels, spading forks, rakes, hoes and finally, about a dozen native-made bows, with bundles and bundles of arrows. It looked like there wasn’t going to be room below, but they made it fit. The fuel jugs were tied down along the flush-deck toe-rail. Working the deck was going to be a nightmare going back. The Cowlitz Warriors roped their Slaves together and walked away. Now, with night falling, the wind was quite fresh, coming right upriver, and the skipper and Mickey sailed Orion right away from the dock, tacked out into the channel, then gybed up-river. Constance helped Mickey set the two foresail-booms for “wing-and-wing” running, and the big mainsail was shortened by three reefs, as it tended to mask the wind generator, and they needed that. It was flood tide, so the boat made little noise ghosting upriver, AND it made over six knots, almost hull-speed! The Skipper calculated that this would put them into St. Helens three hours before dawn, so he had Mickey furl the Working Jib, and they slowed down two knots. There was an advantage to going slower: it made the windmill turn faster, so more power to the batteries. The wind began to die off about midnight, so after his shortwave listening was done, the Skipper recalculated based on four knots and also two knots. Four got him there at dawn, two by mid-morning. He ordered the Working Jib back up and after the batteries showed full-charge, he took the reefs out of the mainsail and hoisted it back up to the peak of the mast. They were back at three knots for now, but slowly losing speed. They were also going a perfect trolling speed, so John and Katherine fished two poles apiece. Two Coho and one Chinook salmon came aboard when Sand Island and St Helens came into view after daybreak.
The Slave came on deck, unfettered now except for her collar and leash. She was wearing well-used, but clean “lucky-locker” clothing, all menswear, but it covered her. She bore mugs of tea and fish soup, and even managed a smile. She was smart enough to have figured out that first, this mixed-race outfit was strong enough to survive AND they would keep her alive, and two, she WAS a woman, with a working womb, and therefore valuable to them. Her life was secure, and she knew it. She also knew that her owner, the strange roly-poly Native woman who could move like lightning and had defeated BOTH her male former-companions AT ONCE in knife-combat, was NOT the woman to cross, EVER. The Slave knew, to the roots of her very Soul, that this woman WAS her future, for good or bad.
Making the last mile into St Helens Marina was tough. For the umpteenth time, the Captain TRIED to sail, but the now-ebbing current flowing through the narrowed channel was just too strong, so he started his diesel and they finished that last mile in ten minutes. Captain Borcher was there and he had brought five men and two women of the Militia with him, and they and their push-carts and wheelbarrows were lined up and waiting.
Katherine Otter made introductions, both of herself and her daughter, and she ANNOUNCED her Slave.
“My honorable Warriors, this is my war-Slave. I shall call her Raccoon, because she WAS a thief, but she is also cunning, like that night-creature. She was smart enough to give herself up when I defeated her bandit-companions, and if she applies that level of smart to her work here, we will get along just fine. I will have her work for this Militia, doing such Slave-work as you may assign her. I noticed that she was unmarked, and still is, except for my slave-marks on her. Show the slave marks, Raccoon. When she is working for you, she gets praise if she does well, and I will reward her, or she gets whipped if she does not do well and you may whip her to encourage better work. For you men, please do not mate with her, and if she asks by word or other way to mate, I want to know about that quickly. Captain Borcher will decide who she mates with if she mates at all. Slave Raccoon, your work now will be to remove the cargo from inside the boat to those up here who will put it ashore and take it away to be secured. Handle everything carefully. Do not damage the cargo or the boat as you remove it or you will be severely beaten. Get to work! My daughter has some questions related to her sustenance-gathering work. Constance?”
“My Warriors, I am humbled and proud to be working for you. My mother didn’t mention my status, but I am now the wife of Corporal Mickey here, by arrangement of my Chief, Mak’aa, and of course, Mickey’s acceptance. My job here will be to bring you our Tribal knowledge on using Nature’s Bounty to not only help us survive, but help us actually improve our lives. In the First Nations, you know us as “Indians” from an ancient European explorer’s reference, in the First Nations we follow an Earth-Oriented religion. Some of us also follow the Christian religion and we have and use Christian names, some of us. We have our own codes of behavior, all of which were established well before the white men first arrived. My mother’s Slave is an example. When we go to war and defeat our enemies, we have several options. One of them is to take our captives as personal or tribal slaves. All slaves become part of the Tribe, and must follow Tribal rules. There are four Castes, or classes, in our Tribe. The Chiefs and their families and the Shamans, or religious leaders, then just below that, the Warriors, then ordinary tribes-people, the largest caste. Slaves can either be considered a sub-class or of no class. A Slave may be raised in caste by vote of the Ruling Council, but not by the single action of a Chief. This is about the ONLY limitation on the power of a Chief. Thank you all for allowing me to relate my position here. Captain, shall we continue with our work?”
“Yes, Constance, and thank YOU for your excellent summary, that saves ME some teaching.” The hatch-way cargo-passer yelled down below, but nothing came back up to him. He dropped down into the ship and Raccoon was asleep on the deck. He came back up and told Katherine Otter. She started below, but Skipper Max handed her a short piece of rope.
“She will need a stronger lesson, Katherine.”
“Yes, I can see that. I will send her up here for her thrashing. You’ll need someone else down here to handle cargo, sir.”
“Okay, Katherine.” Katherine goes back down the hatchway into the boat’s interior, then there is a loud yelp from Raccoon, as Katherine strikes her sleeping form. Anguished wailing starts, and Slave Raccoon comes up the hatchway, minus her shirt. Skipper Max yells for Mickey, who is ashore on the dock now.
“I need my Bosun. Since we’ve reverted to older codes, my bosun needs to thrash this lazy crew-member.” Mickey comes back aboard, finds rope and ties her hands above her head to the main-boom, which he then raises by it’s halyard until she is standing on her tip-toes on the deck.
“How many, Skipper?”
“Ten, Bosun. Back and ass. Objective is stripes but not blood. You can have two extra to practice.” Mickey leans over next to her head and speaks in a low voice.
“Slave, how you take this whipping might have a bearing on how long you live. If you take it well without screaming and cursing, it will go much easier on you. If you react badly during the whipping, you will probably get more than the twelve stripes on your hide. If you REALLY fuck up, I will guess that your Owner might decide to kill you, and we will hang you right here.”
“I will try to be silent, Bosun.” Mickey undid the rope holding her pants up, dropping them, then made a coil out of the pants-rope and put it in front of her face.
“Bite on this, so you don’t bite your tongue.” She opened wide, he shoved the rope in and she bit down on it. He started, high up, his first slash with the rope putting a bright stripe on her back diagonally. He worked downward with each stroke until with the sixth one, he was right across her ass-cheeks. She hadn’t made a sound, but had lost bladder control and peed all down her legs onto her pants. Mickey started up the other side with his other arm, and finished with the herring-bone pattern even. One or two of the welts oozed a little, but no droplets of blood appeared. He reached up and took the coil of rope out of her mouth. The Skipper came over, looked at her back, nodded to Mickey. Raccoon spoke then.
“Bosun, may I return to my work now?” Mickey looked at the skipper, who shook his head “no”.
“No, slave, first you go ashore and rinse out those pants, wring them out and put them back on. When you aren’t dripping, you may go back to work. You needn’t wear a shirt. Those stripes have to dry a bit.” Now Constance came up and looked at her back as Mickey was lowering the main boom back down and untying her from it.
“After we get unloaded, I will go upcountry with Mickey and collect some Yarrow and bring it in to make a poultice for her back.” Mickey reaches into his belt-pouch and pulls out some wilted green plant material.“Like this, my love?” She take some, rubs it between her palms and smells it.
“Yes, that’s yarrow. You’re the first white I’ve ever met who used it, my husband. Give this bunch to her to chew.” The pain-sweat was starting to run down Raccoon’s face. “Slave, put this in your mouth and chew on it. Don’t swallow it, just chew it and then suck the spit out and swallow that, then chew some more. It will take the pain away. Skipper, replace her down below. She can’t do delicate work for a while.” The yarrow, a mild narcotic, was effective in minutes and the pain-sweat stopped. She was still dripping wet, but she took a place at the gangplank and passed the cargo along, saying nothing. No one spoke to her, either. Her back was THE lesson-plan in Militia discipline at that point. All of the Militia men and women knew there had been, and would be, again, times when they couldn’t keep their eyes open on duty. Now they knew what to expect if they got caught and it mattered to their superior.
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