The Oath

by Frank E. Peretti

  Bernie went back to polishing glasses. His rifle was behind the bar, within easy reach.

  Paul Myers was in his usual place at the end of the bar, under the television. He too was armed; he’d been assigned the back door.

  Carl Ingfeldt was stationed at a table near the front door, with Kyle Figgin.

  The door opened; the cowbell clanged. Steve Benson came into the tavern.

  “Hey, Professor,” said Bernie.

  “Hello. Is Harold Bly around?”

  Harold called from his table in the back, “Over here.”

  Andy made a shot. The balls clacked around the table. Paul sipped from his beer and reached for a pretzel. Carl said nothing; he didn’t think his voice would sound steady.

  Steve crossed over to Harold’s table. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  Harold stood and extended his hand. “I’m glad you called. It’s about time we talked this thing out. Would you like a beer, on the house?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Bernie was already on his way with a tall, cold one. He set it in front of Steve as the two men sat down.

  Steve looked around the tavern before getting too settled. Here was Harold Bly right across the table from him; two older gentlemen were positioned strategically at tables on either side; Carl and Doug Ellis’s sidekick, two guys you wouldn’t expect to see together, were now sitting together, and by the door. Andy Schuller and his buddies, who once had had such a vital interest in punching Steve’s lights out, were now so absorbed in their game they didn’t seem to notice he’d come in. All of this didn’t feel right, and on top of that, Steve was very aware that his back was to the room.

  Oh, well. There was fear and mistrust on both sides, he was sure. Now was the time to defuse it all.

  “I’m not sure exactly where to begin,” Steve said.

  “Perhaps I can help.” Bly said. “I understand you finally found the dragon.”

  Maybe Bly was trying to shock him, Steve thought. But no matter; they’d gone directly to the key topic. Steve smiled and proceeded carefully. “Word does get around in this town.”

  Harold chuckled disarmingly. “Just a hunch, really. We saw you looking a bit singed when you went to Levi’s.”

  Amazing. Bly seemed to have eyes everywhere. Steve saw no advantage in denying it. “Mr. Bly, I meant no harm in coming here. I only wanted to find out what happened to my brother, and now I have. So that’s what we need to talk about. I want you to know—” He looked around the room and spoke to anyone who might be listening. “I want all of you to know that I respect your beliefs and traditions. I don’t want to violate them.” Then his gaze centered on Bly. “The dragon’s there, it’s real, and I’m a wildlife biologist. It’s my job to study nature, to attempt to understand it, to discover things we’ve never known about before—”

  Bly held up his hand. “Mr. Benson, here’s the first thing you need to understand: This is our valley. The dragon is our dragon. It’s nobody else’s business.”

  But that was the primary thing Steve could not understand. “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the dragon killing people? It’s eating them, am I right?”

  Bly exchanged glances with some others in the room. “That’s all a matter of opinion, like anything else.”

  “No,” Steve said firmly. “Listen, I’m sorry, but it’s not a matter of opinion. My brother, Cliff, was half eaten, and his wife was there and saw it happen. There’s no question in my mind that the dragon is a predator. It needs to be studied before it kills more people. Maybe it can even be contained.”

  Bly raised an eyebrow. “What gives you a right to come in here and ‘study’ something that doesn’t belong to you?”

  Steve could only reiterate, “It’s killing people!”

  Harold leaned back in his chair, looking relaxed. “We prefer not to think about that.”

  “Mr. Bly, I’m sorry, but this isn’t making any sense!”

  Bly leaned over the table, his palms flat on its surface, his eyes intense and the cigar clenched in his teeth. “Mr. Benson, who are you to tell me what makes sense?” He called out, “Doug!”

  Doug Ellis came through the passage from the mercantile and took a chair directly to Steve’s left. He didn’t look altogether vicious, but he didn’t look warm and friendly either.

  “You remember Doug Ellis?” said Bly. “Tracy’s husband, right?”

  Steve didn’t comment.

  Bly continued, relishing the moment. “Word has it you and Doug’s wife got a little frisky last night. Is that true?”

  Then Bly and Doug Ellis sat there waiting for an answer. Steve could only stare back at them, frantically searching his mind for any answer they might find acceptable. Such an answer did not exist.

  Bly knew that. This was a great moment for him. “Doug and Tracy are married. Man and wife. Now does shacking up with another man’s wife make a lot of sense?”

  Steve attempted an answer. “She’s separated from him. She moved out. She’s free to make her own choices.”

  “We’re not talking about her!” Bly snapped. “We’re talking about you, and what you did, and why. Bly shot a glance at Doug, who now, to Steve, looked bigger and meaner than ever before. “You know, if I was Doug, I’d have a good mind to tear you apart, maybe even kill you if it came to that.”

  Doug eyed Steve up and down, as if deciding what he was going to do with him. “Let me tell you something, mister,” Doug said slowly. “Tracy’s a good woman, but she’s got a wild side, sure. Everybody around here knows it. This isn’t the first time she’s moved out and taken up with someone. But I made up my mind she was the only woman I was ever gonna love, and as far as I’m concerned, she still is. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get her back again.” He leaned forward and spoke directly into Steve’s face. “And you don’t know what pain is until you lose the only good thing you ever had to some—some—” Doug hit the table with his fist, and Steve jumped. Then Doug sat back in his chair and looked away.

  Steve remained silent, knowing that anything he might say now would only make the situation worse.

  “Let’s get back to the point,” Bly said to Steve. “Here you are, just back from Levi Cobb’s Sunday school class, all convinced the dragon’s our fault and how you’ve got to save us from our own dragon, isn’t that right?”

  “Hey,” Steve tried to protest, “that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t give a rip about what Levi Cobb says—”

  “Then try listening to me!” said Bly, catching Carl’s eye.

  Carl and Kyle rose and guarded the front door while Paul went to the back door and did the same.

  I’m dead, Steve thought.

  TRACY KEPT the patrol car rolling at well over eighty, slowing only for the treacherous curves in the road as it followed the meandering Hyde River. She was mapping out the town in her mind, rehearsing what she would do, where she would go, trying to anticipate Bly’s strategy, where his cronies might be lurking, what armaments they might use.

  She was armed herself, not only with her weapons, but also with the shotgun from Sheriff Collins’s car and the sheriff’s sidearm. This whole thing was going to be crazy. If Collins was one of Bly’s pawns, her uniform wasn’t going to count for much. They were going to be ready, spring-loaded, desperate . . .

  This wasn’t going to be crazy; it was going to be suicide.

  Call for help, a voice inside told her. Get some backup.

  I’ve shot the sheriff of Clark County, she replied, and kept driving.

  HAROLD BLY was in no hurry, it seemed. He just kept looking at Steve, watching him worry as the trap closed around him. “How you feeling, Benson? Got some pain in your chest? Huh?”

  Steve didn’t answer, but his silence was answer enough.

  Bly only smiled at him and proceeded to unbutton his own shirt. The reddening scar over his heart was unmistakable. The horror and recognition must have been obvious on Steve’s face because Bly gave a harsh laugh. “Look famili
ar? Some earn this with greed, and some with hate, and some with envy. Stevie, I earned this by being the meanest, toughest boss man this valley ever saw. I own the land, I have the jobs, I call the shots. This is heaven and I’m God, and I’m about to make a bigger contribution to this town’s history than old man Hyde himself.”

  Steve could feel cold terror crawling down his spine. The biggest contribution old man Hyde had made to the town’s history was wanton murder.

  “Andy!” Bly called. “Show him what you’ve got!”

  Andy set down his pool cue and unbuttoned his shirt. There was a dark brown welt on his chest.

  Bly hollered and gestured, “Come on, all of you! Let’s get it right out in the open!”

  All around the room, the same mark appeared. Some were faint red, others darker, some brown, others almost black.

  “Clayton!” Bly hollered.

  Clayton? Steve turned. There was a man at the bar just turning around.

  It was Clayton Gentry, the young logger from down the valley. Steve saw that his face was black and blue and puffy as if he’d been beaten. He hadn’t opened his shirt, and it was easy to see he didn’t want to.

  “Clayton, this man needs to see you’re in the same boat with the rest of us!”

  Clayton’s voice was quiet but defiant. “No, he doesn’t.”

  Bly stared him down for a moment, but then let it go with a laugh. “Pardon him. He’s still a little timid about it. We all try to hide it at first. Maggie tried to hide it, Charlie tried to hide it, we all did, even I did, but who were we kidding?” He drew a deep breath and sighed. “Why hide anything when we all have it? We are what we are, so we do what we do and nobody needs to apologize. You get used to it—real used to it.”

  Bly shook his head at the memory. “You should have seen Maggie the night she died—oh, excuse me, left town. She was standing outside my door, happy as a clam, just proud as a fool about what she’d done and how she’d gotten away with it for so long—and she was dripping and stinking like rotten meat, and everybody knew it but her.

  “Charlie was the same. He had a doozy. You could smell it across the room. But he thought he could hide it!” Bly laughed at that, the laugh hissing through his nose. “Aw, but in the end, he didn’t care either. Nobody does. We don’t, and neither will you.”

  Steve was incredulous, staring at one man, then another, his eyes traveling about the room.

  Bly banged the table to get his full attention again. “So listen, Stevie, I don’t think you’re in any position to help us out, you know? You’re no better than we are, no smarter. You’re just like us, and you’re marked just like us, and you’re going to end up just like us. Shacking up with another man’s wife wasn’t all that original, but hey, it got you in, so it’ll do.”

  TRACY SLOWED as she entered town, wishing that she and her patrol car were invisible. In Hyde River, someone was always watching.

  She rounded a turn and could see the wider part of town—the four-way stop, the hardware store, the two-pump Chevron station, and Charlie’s Tavern and Mercantile—a few blocks ahead. She immediately spotted Steve’s camper parked in front of the tavern, along with a number of familiar-looking trucks.

  And she knew there was trouble.

  All the tires were slashed, and the camper was sitting on the rims. The people in the street—she knew many of them—were not in their usual, stop-to-talk clusters, and there were no casual conversations going on. Every person looked stationed where he or she stood. Two men stood close to the camper as if guarding it. Three more stood across the street, their eyes toward the tavern, watching.

  Up and down the street, men and women stood in their little yards as if waiting for a parade, their eyes toward the tavern. Obviously, no one was working today, Tracy thought. That meant big trouble.

  Two blocks before the main part of town, Tracy wrenched the steering wheel to the left, went down a narrow street, turned into an alley, and tucked the car into a narrow gap between an empty concrete-block house and a long-defunct machine shop. She hoped she hadn’t been seen but knew it was a slim hope, at best.

  Now, how could she carry two shotguns while using one of them? Where could she carry the extra sidearm? Which was the safest and quickest route to the tavern? How could she keep from getting stopped—or shot?

  HAROLD BLY buttoned up his shirt, as did the others. They’d made their point in devastating fashion.

  “Messing around with another man’s wife did it for your brother, too,” said Bly. “Kind of funny you didn’t learn anything from that.” Bly reflected on it and shook his head. “But what’s to learn anyway? Do what you want, I say, and when your time comes, you cash in.”

  Steve didn’t understand everything Bly was saying, but he did get the impression he’d contracted a fatal disease that was killing him this very moment.

  Bly leaned back in his chair and gloated. “How about it, Stevie? Feeling proud yet? Feeling immortal? I’ll bet your brother Cliff did. Just ask Evelyn. They all did: Cliff did, Maggie did, so did Vic and Charlie. And now they’re dragon manure.”

  “So you are saying the dragon ate them?”

  Bly smirked. “What do you think?”

  Steve touched his chest. “And this is the dragon’s doing?”

  Bly raised his eyebrows as though impressed. “Hey, you’re learning. A little late, though. You should have gotten out of here while you had the chance.”

  Steve looked around the room. “Why do you let this happen to you? Why don’t you just leave?”

  “Why should we?”

  “Doesn’t this mark mean—? Well, I think I hear you saying the dragon is going to eat you.”

  “Could be.”

  “Then don’t you want to leave? Escape?”

  Bly exchanged glances with the others. “We like it here, Benson. Don’t you?”

  Steve didn’t like it here at all, but he knew better than to say so.

  Bly answered for him, “Sure you do. We all do. You just haven’t figured that out yet.” Bly picked up his beer mug and raised it high. “But you’ve been selected, buddy, so drink up. You’re one of us now.”

  Bly took a long drink from his beer. The others in the room did the same, as if it were a toast. It was eerie. Suddenly everyone seemed so jovial, but Steve could clearly sense they were dancing on his grave.

  He went with the flow and drank. Maybe they were all crazy. Maybe he was dreaming. In any event, maybe, just maybe, he’d get out of there alive if he went along.

  Bly set his mug down and eyed Steve slyly. “But listen, it’s not a done deal; I wouldn’t want you to think that. The way I look at it, you can get out of just about anything if you know the right strings to pull. We’ve got ourselves a little problem, but all we’ve got to do is get rid of what’s causing it. Get rid of the troublemaker, and you’re rid of the trouble.”

  Benjamin Hyde, Steve thought. I’m drinking beer with Benjamin Hyde. “Mr. Bly, I don’t want to cause trouble. That’s why I’m here, to talk this thing through.”

  Bly picked up his beer mug again. “So, drink up, and we’ll talk it through.”

  Steve picked up his beer again and put it to his lips just as the back door swung open.

  “Don’t drink that!” a voice ordered.

  Tracy! Steve twisted in his chair to see her standing just inside the back door, awkwardly grasping a shotgun in her right hand while carrying another in her left, and wearing a sidearm on each hip. She was just aiming a shotgun at Bernie behind the bar. “Hands, Bernie! Let’s see those hands!”

  Bernie, who had been reaching for something, raised his hands.

  Tracy panned the room with the muzzle of the shotgun, and hands went up like weeds growing. “No one move! Steve, come on!”

  Steve protested, “Tracy, I’m trying to make friends here.”

  “Get away from that door!” she ordered Carl, who sat back down. “Hands, Andy! Hands!” Andy withdrew his hands from behind the pool table and held the
m high.

  “Does your boss know where you are?” Harold Bly asked in a condescending tone.

  “I shot him, Harold.”

  She said that so quickly and simply that it took a moment for the others in the room to grasp it. There was a shocked silence, and everyone in the room, except Steve, looked at Bly.

  Bly didn’t believe her, and sneered. “Oh, come on, Tracy.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” she fired back. “If he was still alive then I’d be dead, and I think you know it. I think you put him up to it. And I’ll bet you’ve got a nasty wound over your heart just like he did.”

  Bly gave a derisive chuckle as he exchanged a quick glance with the others. “And how is yours?” he asked.

  She looked at him with seething hatred. “Like fire, Harold. Like fire. So I’m very upset right now, like I want to shoot somebody. Steve, get over here. They’re out to kill you, too.”

  Looking warily all directions, Steve got up from the table.

  “Come on!” Tracy urged.

  He hurried across the room. She handed him the extra shotgun, then addressed the room. “Okay. You want to be rid of the trouble. Well the trouble’s leaving right now. We’re through with you; we’re through with the valley. You can have the dragon, all right? He’s all yours. We’re out of here.”

  She reached behind her, yanked the back door open, and they made their escape, Tracy leading, Steve covering the rear.

  The door closed, and every man went for his gun.

  “Easy now,” Bly shouted, jumping up from his place. “Go with the plan! Go with the plan! Elmer! Joe! Take the south end! Carl, take the north! Move!”

  STEVE’S FIRST thought was to head for his camper. Tracy grabbed his arm and pulled him down the alley. “Forget it, the tires are slashed!”

  Adrenaline pumping, Steve followed Tracy, his senses alert, the shotgun ready.

  They ran full speed behind the old businesses, past garbage cans and loading doors, along cracked retaining walls and over deep potholes, fearing a sniper in every window, an assailant around every corner. They could hear shouting from the streets out front and the growling of engines starting.