In The Land of Ice & Blood Part I

I hope everyone will forgive the hiatus in new stories, it’s not for lack of inspiration, I have many stories to tell.  A few months back I made the decision to finally attend my first writing conference and since that decision I have been working non-stop on getting my book ready for critiques and submissions at the conference and I felt guilty every moment I wasn’t working on it.  It has taken up a lot of time but I’m happy to say that I’m now a little more prepared for the conference, so it’s been worth it.  Now I can finally return to bringing you the weekly adventures of Wisconsin’s first super hero! 

This week our hero must travel outside his usual jurisdiction to stop the most brutal and large scale assault against mother Earth he’s seen yet.  So without further ado, I’m pleased to give to you: In the Land of Ice & Blood Part I…

 

Red.

The water outside the hull of the Crayfish, my submarine, is stained with it.  I arrived in Canadian waters only moments ago after a long night of using the CrayFish’s lasers to burrow new underground waterways to the country from Wisconsin, USA.  But I’m still too late, it would appear.  The carcass of a dead seal sinks past my porthole and it becomes clear.

Canada’s annual seal slaughter has already begun. 

But I’m not here to save a few seals—no that would prove quite useless in the grand scheme of things. 

I’m here to stop the hunt for good.  Sixteen hours ago the home of Canadian Parliamentarian Harb Orseel, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, was invaded by a rogue faction of seal hunters who call themselves “the Club,”  it’s a play on words but I’m not amused.  Their demands are simple, all they want is for the government to permanently stay out of their business and allow them to continue the annual seal hunt unimpeded for the foreseeable future.  The only problem with that, aside from the fact that Canada doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, is that the seal trade isn’t what it used to be.  Seal byproducts are not the multi-billion, worldwide business they once were.  Humans have found alternatives for seal products—for the most part, the black market is the only fence for them and even those are dwindling as countries who use seal byproducts for superstitious practices join the 21^st century. 

The majority of Canadian citizens don’t even support the slaughter anymore and the failing industry needs government funding to keep it going.  In short, the practice of the seal hunt is nothing but a barbaric practice with no real economic value and those who participate in it are nothing but a bunch of Neolithic barbarians who need to kill, bludgeon, stab…or club something to feel stronger.  Minister Harb was going to put a stop to the seal hunt at the Fisheries and Oceans summit but the Club had other plans and have threatened to kill him if the summit votes to stop the seal hunt.

It’s a bold move, even by extremist group standards, and it’s a situation my expired passport couldn’t keep me from sticking my nose in. 

I’m getting readings from the sheet of ice above me, warm bodies standing over fading heat signatures.  I haven’t met any of the locals yet and I’m itchy to break the ice.  The Crayfish rises from the dark depths and I fire the burrowing laser at the chunk of ice above me, but I don’t cut all the way through—smashing through the ice will make for a much more dramatic entrance.

A group of three hunters has a seal pinned against a mound of ice.  They raise their clubs, ready to bring it down on the frightened and helpless sea mammal.  The craft closes in on ten feet and I brace myself for impact.

CRACK!  The sub slams into the ice.  ERRRREACK!  Ice scrapes against the orange hull as it emerges from the freezing ocean.  The hunters fall to the ice as my craft breaches the surface and the seal escapes with his life back into the ocean.  You should see the looks on the three hunter’s faces as they slowly turn to look at the craft from the snow, unsure of what just happened.  The entrance hatch flips open on the top of the sub and the hunters flinch. 

Then I make my move.  I shoot up and out of the green cockpit, flying right in front of the sun, momentarily blinding the gaping goons who are trying to keep track of me.  “Two for flinching!”  I shout as I fling two fox at each of them, knocking their weapons out of their hands.  I hit the snow and kick the closest one in the face, knocking him out cold.  The other two get up from the ice, one charges me and I leap over the top of him, I come down on his back and slam him into the snow.  I try to kick him but he rolls out of the way.  I bring my foot down in an axe kick two more times but he keeps dodging me and then I feel it, the other hunter has found the club he lost earlier when the Crayfish burst through the ice beneath him and he strikes me with it right in between my shoulder blades.  I stagger forward as the one with the club helps his friend up, once up he recovers his spear and takes an offensive stance with it. 

This isn’t what I expected but at least they’re posing a challenge…and they’ve already told me everything I need to know to defeat them.  The one who hit me with the club is a scrawny guy and likes the sneak attacks—he won’t know what to do with head on offensive.  The other one I’ve already fought with is a top-heavy, imbalanced guy who went down easily.

And he will again.  A loose chunk of ice sits at my feet, I channel my inner soccer player and kick the chunk at his legs, I make contact and his legs fall out from underneath him again.  He cracks his head against the ice and I dash forward toward the coward.  The guy reacts just the way I thought he would—he freezes.  Apparently he was only brave while chasing down slow, defenseless animals.  I jump and catch him in the face with my knee.  He lands on the snow and doesn’t get up.  I snap back to the top heavy thug who is trying to lift himself from the snow and make sure he’ll be staying down for a while longer. 

The wind blows against me and if it weren’t for the heat absorbing material of my suit, or the thermal mask covering my mouth, warming every breath I take in, I would’ve keeled over long ago from my asthma.  I stand back up and for the first time I can appreciate the wilderness—or at least I would if it weren’t so tainted with overkill.  The sun reflects off the snow and ice but I can see the carnage clearly.  I’ve heard stories about what happens here on the ice and I’ve seen pictures of seals cowering in the cold shadow of the human with club poised to bring it down and crush their skulls but there are just some things you have to see in person before your heart truly breaks. 

And it’s times like these when I hate being lumped into this greedy, violent bunch called humanity.

Before me I see hundreds of pools of blood staining the snow in gory recollections of the violence I’m too late to stop.  Seal pups, too young and too small to bring in any real cash, are left dead and scattered across the tundra, killed just for sport—killed just for having the unfortunate predisposition of being a part of a species with an unfortunate predisposition.  Their usually warm bodies are frozen and still, and their normally silver skin is a sickly pale shade of grey—the life having been drained from them. 

They’ll never grow up. 

They’ll never again swim in the waters that hugged them since birth with the parents they saw slaughtered before their eyes right before their own lights were extinguished forever.  But then I wonder if in some sick, twisted way, if this death isn’t somehow better than living the rest of their lives, which for a seal is a good thirty years, with the images of their parents’ murder swimming around their heads.

The annual seal slaughter is the most gruesome and horrible form of prejudice—no different than racism and I thank God that the arctic temperatures have frozen the scent of the blood and innards that have been spilled across the ice but still find it difficult to keep last night’s dinner where it’s at.  It’s like a train wreck and I can’t look away.  I wince at the evidence of the needless pain spilled over the frozen tundra—the violence that was handed out to the hundreds of innocent creatures, social creatures—creatures with families, who have been killed for no more than thirty-two dollars a pop. 

The life of a father, son, daughter or mother for thirty-two dollars? 

I have to get Minister Harb out of the Club’s clutches. 

I have to get him to that summit.

But first I have to get to his home.  Suddenly I hear the voices of a larger hunting party—too large for me to take on by myself, heading my way and I decide it’s time to pay the Minister that visit.  So I turn from the blood-smeared ice and jump back inside the Crayfish.  The hatch seals above me just as the new hunting party rounds a massive snow drift and discover their fellow killers laid out unconscious on the ice. 

As if by design, my comm. link switches on, “the Club just released another video.”  My wife tells me.  “You’re running out of time.”  Then she flips a switch and a replay of their broadcast cuts in.  Senator Harb is on his knees before three men in big, plushy dark blue coats with grey fur-trimmed hoods whose shadows Shroud their faces in darkness.  The biggest man holds a gun to Harb’s temple, turns to the camera and, as though he’s speaking directly to me, says, “you have twenty minutes to comply with our demands.  After that, this gun…”  He says, firing off a round at the ceiling before dropping the pistol to floor while another of his comrades hands out bloodstained clubs to each of them, “…will be the least of the good Minister’s concerns…”

The screen goes black and I’m about to ask my wife if she was able to get the coordinates for the Minister’s house but before the first syllable of my request even leaves my lips she’s got it displayed across the screen.  I shake my head with an approving little half smile—God I love that woman…

The Crayfish sinks back into the frigid water and I set a course for Minister Harb’s compound.

 

 

…To Be Concluded…