Night is his friend

Night is his friend

A battle that never occurred.

The barn owl sat motionless, her talons gripping the slender birch branch with effortless ease. Its head turned, thus rotating that heart shaped sound collecting dish, towards the most tiny of sounds. No human ear could have detected the sound of minute movement in the grass and bracken some fifty feet away. The patience of the hunter took over, stillness became the owl, a silent statue showing no sign of the predatory aggression that was coiled up within. The mouse moved onto shorter grass, silent wings glided the owl to its prey, the mouse's life ended so that the owl chicks could eat and so continue their lives. Neither mouse nor owl realized that this tiny part of life, this tiny event in the vastness of creation, had been observed. The elderly man waiting until the predator left with its prey, then he eased cramped limbs and stretched up his arms. He made no sound but so many tiny creatures of natures night, sensed his presence and silently crawled or slid away. His knife, secure in a scabbard fastened to his belt and to his leg, to ensure no movement, was as razor sharp as the owls talons, and just as deadly to his prey. At twelve inches long it was almost a small sword. The hilt bound in hemp, the blade sharpened on both edges and a point ground down to give a needle like ability to penetrate, the steel was etched to take away reflection. Polished reflective display was not part of the night hunters way. He would never use a torch, no light to show others his position. He crouched down and looked up, using the natural light of the stars to show the darker shadows, the night is vary rarely “pitch black,” it is so very unusual for darkness to be so complete that the skilled and experienced, needed illumination. Maybe in a cave, late at night with a curtain across the entrance, such darkness can be found but here in the forest and woodland such darkness did not exist.

He flowed rather than walked, nothing hurried, nothing rushed, no sound, no disturbance of the vegetation. Only another such as he was, would even detect his presence and such as he, are very rare, certainly none within ten miles of this woodland place. He paused, listening with an intensity and with a stillness that are so alien to city humans. His tan and dark brown clothes, even the weather tanned skin, reflected no light. It was as if he absorbed all the light that came his way. The owl silently returned to its perch, the mouse has fed the chicks and it was time for the owl to find its own meal. The hunter and the owl were kin, creatures of the night, brothers in their friendship with the darkness. While both knew of the others presence, no acknowledgment passed between them, the owl had that certainty of nature, that the hunter was not hunting her nor was he after the small creatures of land and air, that nourished the barn owl and her family. The leaf-mold and grass were damp enough to ensure no sound was made as he passed along the almost invisible pathway. A badger snorted its way along a parallel path, its natural belligerence ensuring it showed no fear of the scent it surely had of the hunter, it grunted and clawed the ground as its claws dug out the worms and moles it fed on. The power and speed of its digging gave no chance of escape for whatever it had found. The hunter moved on, this part of the world of nature, red in tooth and claw, safe from his interference.

He reached the edge of the woodland, the edge of the designated wild life area, he looked out over the barren scorched earth, the ground poisoned so nothing could grow between the edge he stood at and the security wall that protected the city from harm. The barren land and the wall kept all the millions of city inhabitants safe from the dangers of wild life, safe from contamination , safe from all the diseases and harmful influences that every city dweller knows are rampant in the natural world. Inside the city the millions of people lived a safe, synthetic, sterile existence where their only contact with anything organic was through watching their image screens. The omnipresent screens that could not be switched off and which kept them up to date with all the work their government was doing to protect them from the ancient horrors of raw food, disease and illness. They all know that only the brave security enforcement officers in their bio-hazard suits and armed with the latest laser weapons, could venture outside the security wall. While the towering apartment blocks reached a hundred and fifty stories up, not one had a window facing outward, not one could see over the wall.

The hunter watched, still and silent as the old fashioned graves he had read about. Even the relatively few humans who lived in the wild areas, no longer practiced wasteful burials. Everything organic was recycled, composted and used to feed the soil. In the cities all was fuel to the vortex incinerators that were used to generate electricity in the city, the majority of the population were not aware they actually had a preordained date in which they went to these incinerators, only the governmental elite lived natural life spans, the rest were born in the reproduction laboratories, educated, trained to do specific tasks, worked at these tasks until a new technology took over and made their training useless, then these redundant workers went to the incinerators along with every other worker who reached the age of fifty. The humans who lived in the designated wild life areas had very different lives, they may not live much longer that the city folk but they died of natural causes, natural in this case including fights with the city security enforcement officers when they ventured out across the wall, to gather fresh DNA from the bodies of the hunters they killed.

The hunter watched and waited, dawn came, time passed, he still stood and watched and waited. The gates to the city opened and an armored vehicle crept out. Painted white and around twenty feet long and ten wide, this had no windows, the occupants used cameras to view the outside, they studied their screens constantly keeping contact with a the natural world at a safe distance. The vehicle crossed the sterile strip and blundered its way into the woodland, only then did the hunter move. He moved quickly and silently keeping out of range of the sensors in the vehicle. Experience had taught both the natural people and the members of the DNA gathering teams, that the density of the woodland limited the range of motion and heat sensors to about a hundred yards. The video cameras only showed the trees and the jungle of vegetation. The hunter reached a clearing and made contact with his family, they separated and took the warning to all the other natural families within reach, In the reservation food was limited to what could be grown in small clearings which were small so as to be hidden from city drones and the food gained by hunting with spears, bows and knives, the silence, of these weapons, ensured the city surveillance systems did not track them. So family units were small and scattered. News was transferred face to face, no technology involved. This was their security wall.

The natural people scattered and waited, the city vehicle was slow and so the fighting was prolonged, the natural people retreating and hiding, the city vehicle crawling along in pursuit. The intended prey people drew the city officers deeper and deeper into the woodland, A river was reached and crossed hills were climbed, the vehicle crushing vegetation, even young saplings under its tracks but even this dreadnought had its limitations, it had to avoid trees over over one foot diameter, it had to avoid sheer rock faces and deep fast flowing rivers. The natural people would show up on their sensors fleetingly and then disappear. They led the machine deeper and deeper into the natural world. Darkness returned, the hunter was now in his element. They led the machine to a river, experience again had shown that the flow of water confused the automated sensors, if the occupants had windows and search lights they may have seen the hunter and his companions but they relied totally and complete on artificially gathered information. They led the machine up the river, it crawled along the river bed believing the water no more that two feet deep, it followed the people round a sharp bend and into a water fall. The sensors were overwhelmed. Water sprayed over the whole vehicle, it stopped moving, its fail safe position shut down the engines. It became a sealed metal box. The natural people could not see inside but the occupants had no data from the outside. A door opened and bio-suited figures emerged, laser guns at the ready, each officer had personal heat seeking and night vision equipment. Three figures emerged, then at a signal from the hunter, a log was slid through the falling water into the vehicle opening, effectively preventing the door from closing. The three armed figures turned back but had no data of where this log had come from, the falling water obscured all heat detection and the darkness was not disturbed, the hunter and his natural world people did not use light. Blind to what was happening the three fired off their weapons at random, vegetation was damaged but no humans. The log was holding the door open and water was filling the vehicle. The other 2 occupants were panic stricken, trying to get into their bio suits while trying to stop the flow of water, the three outside tried to move the log and get back in to the vehicle. In the chaos the hunter moved to within reach of the officers and swiftly sliced open the nearest bio-suit and cut deeper into the flesh of its wearer. Blood flowed in the water, the officer screamed thus increasing the panic in the others. The water inside rose to reach the control panels, the water short-circuited the whole system, the batteries released their charge in one rush, the occupants there shocked to death by their own technology.

Silence and stillness returned to the woodland, the families returned to their scattered homes, life went on for them. The city deleted the lost vehicle and its officers, from all records, they had not lost a battle because no battle had occurred. There was no mystery about the disappearance of the vehicle and occupants because they never existed. The ruling people did not examine the records of their bureaucracy and the bureaucrats never admitted the existence of a problem. Night followed day and day followed night. Time and life carried on regardless.