GREEN, NO PEACE

By Desmond Reddick

Author’s Note: This story takes place after Liberty Legion #12

Custer, South Dakota
USA

The bell attached to the door of Rosie’s Diner jingled at his entrance. There was no one behind the counter but a few of the customers in the place glanced his way. One man at a booth by the window stared while he whispered to the man across from him. The man turned and stared at him over his shoulder.

Elias thought he saw the word “darkie” come out of the first man’s mouth.

His heavy leather show clacked on the hard linoleum floor as he walked to the counter. Two seats down from him, the only man who paid no mind sat sipping coffee from a small white cup. Though it was almost lunch, Elias could swear he smelt sausage cooking, but all he could see through the window into the kitchen was the back of the paper hat-wearing cook’s head.

“Oh! Sorry! Didn’t see ya there.” A rotund woman with short-cropped hair said as she rounded the corner into the front of the small diner.

The men in the booth chuckled muttering something to each other about the woman getting her eyes checked and Elias sticking out.

“What can I get ya, sweetie?” she said resting her left hip against the counter.

Elias looked to the pie warmer and back to the woman.

“I’ll take a black coffee and a slice of that lemon meringue over there, please.” Elias said with a smile.

Behind him, one of the men muttered something about banana cream pie instead and Elias winced.

“Don’t worry ‘bout them, sweetie.” The woman said in a light voice before raising her volume considerably. “They’re just a bunch of out of work loggers who don’t know their asshole from a pothole!”

The men were silenced. Elias was doubly happy; he didn’t have to kick some honky ass, and he had an admiration for tough women. And an ally worth talking to.

“Besides,” she continued in a low voice, “those hillbillies’re too ugly and stupid to notice a man who cares about how he looks.”

She’s hitting on me, Elias thought. He wore a brown suit and faded brown leather shoes. Not quite as dapper as he used to dress to impress, but it’s been a long time since he was a doctor.

“Are you Rosie?” Elias asked.

She laughed a heavy, throaty laugh.

“Oh dear, no.” she said, catching her breath. “I’m Evelyn. Rosie’s been dead longer than I’ve worked here, and I started here when I was in high school!”

They both chuckled lightly. Elias had an ally. He looked around while she turned to pour him his coffee. The place hadn’t been updated in probably the same amount of time Evelyn’s worked there. Maybe some newer photos of hunting and fishing catches.

“So, what brings you to Custer, Mr…?”

“Wilkens, Elias Wilkens. And I’m working on a story.” he lied. He couldn’t very well tell her his name was Wirtham or that he was there to fight bad guys.

“I thought you were a reporter or something.” Evelyn said.

“Why’s that?” Elias said blowing the steam off of his cup of coffee before taking a sip.

“New York accent, mainly.” she said as she took the top off of a half-empty salt shaker.

That and you don’t get a lot of black folk around here. Elias knew it. There could be more than a couple dozen black people in town and everybody would already know who they are.

Evelyn poured salt into the shaker from a plastic water jug as she continued, “What’s yer story about?”

“Word going around is that Project: Earth is supporting the establishment of a massive wildlife sanctuary around here.”

“Yeah, most of the hunting folk around here hate the hippies,” she nodded over at the two men in the booth when she mentioned hunting folk, “but I think it’s kind of nice.”

“Most of it is on Native land.” Elias said looking for her response.

“Yeah, but what around here isn’t always claimed as Cheyenne land or Sioux land or Lakota land? Seems to me they’d find their lives a lot happier if they weren’t always fighting us and each other over who owns what, know what I mean?”

Elias shrugged begrudging. Damn! he thought. There goes my ally.

Having lost his in, Elias pushed his coffee cup toward the opposite edge of the counter and took a huge bite of lemon meringue after cutting the pie with the side of his fork.

“Oop! I’m out.” Evelyn said, shaking the paltry amount of grainy coffee left in the bottom of the pot. “I’ll be right back.”

Evelyn walked quickly through the swinging door into the kitchen.

“Sometimes, the Indians are the only ones with their heads on straight.”

It was the first thing the man a few seats away from Elias had said since he entered. The man, craggy faced and stringy-haired sat looking down at his coffee. He continued: “Project Earth means well, but there’s a predatory nature with how they are gobbling up land that does not belong to them. Ask yourself the question: why would an environmentalist group steal wild land from Native Americans when the worst they do is head out there and fish on occasion? It isn’t even great for hunting.”

“Hmm…” Elias nodded as he hummed his understanding.

“Aren’t there other places being threatened in far worse a way than a hundred or so fish being pulled out of the river in a year?”

The man put his cup down, stood from his stool and turned towards the door.

As he walked to the door, the man, who Elias could now see was of Native American descent, said one final thing, his voice a hair above a whisper.

“That is Cheyenne land. Ancient Cheyenne land. Just know that if you go out there, you won’t be alone.”

Hushed harsh whispers from the men behind him put an end to taking the higher road for Elias. He paid for his meal and made his move. It was swift and mostly painless…until they woke up.

A moment passed before Evelyn emerged from the kitchen with a fresh pot of hot coffee.

“Sorry for the w…what?”

Evelyn was surprised to see that her two customers at the bar had gone and in their place, a crisp twenty dollar bill sat, its corner pinned under the small plate with only a small piece of pie crust left. The two men she referred to as “hunting folk” in the window booth were both slumped onto the table, unconscious.

“Well, I’ll be…” she said snapping the bill tight between the pinched pointer finger and thumb of each hand.

The hills were quiet. Quiet enough that he could hear most of the conversation happening below. His senses tuned the song of the Earth Mother low to narrow in on the despoiler of his land.

“—and it’ll be done.”

“That’s it, then?”

“After tomorrow, I will have no more need of your protection. The deal will be in place and the land will be under our legal control. Any problems that arise with the locals can be dealt with by local law enforcement.”

“I don’t see why we were needed here in the first place. There’s been nothing but a roadside protest going on down the street. I don’t see any terrorists here.”

“Or any pollution for that matter!”

“If you look, you’ll find it. Besides this is basically the central area. It’s the other parts that we’re worried about being polluted. You know, these people just pour their filth into the rivers and creeks and log indiscriminately. Not to mention the horrible over-fishing and unlicensed hunting going on. It’s like the-“

BA-BOOM!

Blue light flashed, lighting the entire canyon before Red Wolf in an instant, before a beam crackled from an embankment below. It struck the office trailer and tore the siding off of the entire front end. Aluminum shrieked and crunched echoing through the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Red Wolf knew that the time for reconnaissance was over. He whistled and Lobo, the reddish-brown wolf, hunched at his side. Both of them stood stone still because Red Wolf wanted to bide his time. He crouched and took note of the powers displayed by the combatants before him.

The area surrounding the portable office flashed with yellow light, illuminating the entire valley, as a man was projected into the air on a tower of fire.

“I was starting to get bored!” the fiery man shouted as he let loose a flaming blast towards his attacker.

Red Wolf couldn’t see who the attacker was until it was apparent, he had dodged the fire blast when another beam of blue energy crackled through the air, knocking the fiery man out of the air. His flames were extinguished by the time his body hit the ground with a resounding THUD!

Another man swept into the air and shouted down towards his attacker.

“You fool!” he bellowed, his voice booming out over the valley, “You think to attack an Inhuman of Attilan with your pathetic human technology?!”

Wind picked up in a circular motion around the flying man, but it did not obscure what he had to say. Whoever these Inhumans are, Red Wolf thought, they sure have loud voices.

“Even more foolish, human,” he continued as he pointed at the man Red Wolf could not see in the darkness, “is that you, in your audacity, thought that you could survive against me in solo battle let alone against my associates!”

Red Wolf felt the ground rumble from where he crouched. Lobo growled as the two hunters watched the ground on the opposite hill give way in a mudslide that threatened to bury anyone underneath it.

Red Wolf grunted a Cheyenne prayer, guttural and low, as a command to Lobo. The wolf set off at an incredible speed toward the unseen attacker of these superhumans occupying Red Wolf’s ancestral land. From what he’d seen so far, Red Wolf was willing to look at the enemy of his enemy as his friend for now. And he never liked people being outnumbered.

He broke into a sprint towards the flying man, his wolf skin ceremonial garb flopping on his shoulders as he ran. His tomahawk left his hand with lighting speed, propelled by his superpowered throw.

It caught Skybreaker in the temple as he cackled loudly, watching his attacker being swallowed by the wet hillside detritus. He let loose a noise that was neither grunt nor a word in any language Red Wolf had heard before plummeting to the now soaked ground beneath him.

Skybreaker hit the ground with a wet squelching noise as Aqueduct stepped out from behind the rubble of the office. He was admiring his handiwork, turning a bone dry hill into a rolling mudslide deathtrap in mere seconds, when he noticed the most powerful member of his team writhing partially conscious in the mud beside him.

“What the fu–” Aqueduct started to say when he saw what looked like a werewolf running at him full tilt. He raised his hand, intending to summon the muddy water around him to make short work of his attacker.

The only thing Aqueduct wet was his pants after a solid haymaker from the werewolf connected with his jaw and knocked him out cold.

Red Wolf rubbed his fist and took stock of the area. Running down into the valley opened up a much wider field of vision for him to take stock of the situation. He could see Lobo pulling on the exposed hand of a man Red Wolf knew to be the attacker. The rest of the man was buried in the mud.

Red Wolf made his way toward the buried man when his leg was grabbed. He looked down to find his left foot snagged in a vine. Despite the peculiarity of how thoroughly his lower leg was caught, he thought nothing of it and began to pull hard with his leg. When he couldn’t free it, he hacked at it with his KA-BAR. Since it was issued to him back in ‘Nam, it had never dulled and had served its purpose as a lifesaver – or ender – several times since.

But when he began to cut away at the vines wrapped around his leg, they quickly sprouted from the ground and started to snare his knife hand as well. He let go of the knife and tried, in vain to slip his empty hand out of the roots looping around his wrist.

In moments his lower body and right hand were entangled in the hard thin wood vines. He was bent over at the waist and had trouble breathing. Red Wolf dared not call for Lobo in fear of the wolf being snared too.

He quietly concentrated and summoned the strength Owayodata, but the more he struggled against the vines the more entrapped he was.

ZZZZAM!

That was when the ground exploded. Red Wolf was on his back almost completely submerged in mud. It took him a moment to realize he was no longer snared in roots. Mud covered his eyes, so the opportunity to see what happened to release him came slow.

By the time he wiped the mud from his eyes, he was able to see the huge, lumbering beast before him. It was not far away and continued to move forward. In his time on earth, Red Wolf had seen many things – the horrors of the Vietnam War, Wolf Gods, demons, aliens – but what stood before him was entirely new.

The thing stepped forward, but it did not step so much as will roots from the ground to meet the stumps of his legs as they propelled themselves forward. The thing was made of twisted, knotty wood with sharp-looking leaves, not native to Red Wolf’s land, for hair. The plant creature reached forward with a hand of sharpened sticks.

ZZZZAM!

An explosion of blue light hit the thing in the back and sent him flying. The roots snapped audibly as it was pulled from the ground. It was the same force that tore the roots from Red Wolf only seconds ago.

And now, just having finished removing mud from his eyes, Red Wolf was again blinded. This time it was the bright flash of blue light in the dark night. As the dots in his field of vision slowly died, Red Wolf saw Lobo in the distance with his savior.

The faithful wolf had been digging the man out of the mud for the past few minutes. Now, Red Wolf was able to see the mud-spattered blue and white full-face mask and white armored upper body. The man was still submerged to his upper torso, but his smoking hand was held to his side.

After Red Wolf had helped Lobo pull the man from the hardening mud, they stood under the light of the moon and talked. Red Wolf stood resolute, surveying the disturbed land around him while Cardiac brushed and rubbed the filth from his costume.

“They’re called Force of Nature.” Cardiac said to break the silence.

“They were on my people’s land and working for those who have nothing but the worst intentions,” Red Wolf replied.

“Very true,” Cardiac continued, “though I don’t think they had much to do with it. They’re an eco-terrorist group. They must have been swindled into working the other side of the fence. Rumor is, there’s lithium in these hills.”

“The reason matters not. This is Cheyenne land and any who seek to defile it or appropriate it for their own use is an enemy. “

There was silence again for a while until whispered choppers could be heard in the distance.

Military, Cardiac thought. Maybe SHIELD.

“The reason always matters,” Cardiac said while preparing to make a getaway.

ZZZZZT!

A television static image of a silhouetted man popped into vision as both Cardiac and Red Wolf prepared for battle. Cardiac pointed his pulse staff and Red Wolf his coup stick; the men were odd reflections of each other, in a way: two solitary sentinels in the battle for personal liberty.

The image solidified into an actual person. Red Wolf recognized the man in the masked yellow and green costume as Thin Man. Only, the costume was ragged and torn, hanging off of his ravaged body.

“You’re Elias Wirtham?” he asked Cardiac.

“And if I am?”

“I need your help. In fact,” he looked to Red Wolf for a second before continuing, “I need help from both of you.”

The two did not have a chance to agree before the static noise rose again and swallowed all three men as three white ULTIMATUM helicopters swept over the Black Hills and into the muddy valley below.

LIBERTY NOTES: Why is Thin Man in bad shape? Find out and follow the adventures of Cardiac and Red Wolf in upcoming issues of Liberty Legion!