Treaters: Book One of the Divine Conflict.

by CJ Rutherford

  “Shut up and try the radio again.” I gestured at the console. We called this “Dark Country,” because the hills and valleys turned any sort of radio signal into sporadic, garbled hit-or-miss. You could find your favorite radio station about fifty percent of the time; your second favorite around thirty percent of the time, and that yelling, screaming, psycho talk-radio preacher about ninety percent of the time.

  We weren't even getting Disk Jockey Jesus today.

  My lodge was in the middle of the boonies of North Dakota with no reliable cell coverage; well-drawn water; even the power in the lodge was provided by propane-fuelled generator. As we approached civilization, though, we should have gotten some sort of signal.

  Ted fiddled with the controls for the hundredth time. All we got was static.

  I looked at the overcast sky. “Probably atmospherics.” He thumped me on the arm. It was strange, though. We’d been coming out here every year for the last ten years. I swear I could always tell the point where the radio came back on. I'd marked it with a particularly misshapen elm tree sitting on a hill. We’d passed that tree over ten miles back.

  “I’m calling Johnnie. Maybe this rig of yours is bust.” Ted pulled his phone out. Cell signal, at least, was back, though no one back home was answering. I sighed and rolled my eyes, as Ted muttered under his breath. God help me if anything is wrong; I’ll never hear the last of it.

  “John.” He only got the one word out. I heard Johnnie talking rapidly and heard Bill shouting in the background. What the fuck was his problem? Did he need to puke again? I looked across and saw Ted’s mouth open and all the color drained from his face. He turned the radio back on and started to manually tune it. “Shit! John Patrick O’Reilly, you better not be shitting me or so help me…” The words died on his lips, as a message I never thought I’d hear came out of the speakers.

  “...gency Alert System. Stay in your homes. If you have a shelter, use it. Do not come out at night. Government forces are attempting to control the event and shelters are being established. The President of the United States or his designated representative will be speaking shortly. This is a national alert. This is the Emergency Alert System. Stay in your ho – I flicked the control stalk to silence it. “Tell John to pull over.” There were no other cars around, and I shuddered as I realized this broadcast might have something to do with that. I braked and came to a stop at the side of the tree-lined road.

  The Chevy pulled up and Johnnie and Bill got out. We stood looking at each other for a long moment, wondering who should speak first. In the end, it was Bill.

  “What the fuck’s going on, Jaz?” His eyes were wide, and he hugged himself as he shook perceptibly. He pointed at the truck. “That’s the fucking emergency broadcast system, man. Why are they playing the fucking emergency broadcast?”

  He was clearly in shock, so Johnnie dealt with it in the only way he knew how. “Quit yer bawlin’, bro,” he said as he smacked his younger brother on the side of the head. “This is all some sorta mistake. We’re still pretty far out from civilization. Could be some teenage hacker wannabe playing a prank or something.”

  “That sounds about right, Top.” I knew it wasn’t anything of the sort, and so did Johnnie, but it calmed Bill. Johnnie looked at me, and, under the bravado and the command face, I saw the fear in his eyes.

  I looked around. We were off the beaten track, but I hadn’t seen another car in the hour and a half we’d spent driving toward the South Dakota state line. That might change when we hit the highway, but even here in the boondocks there should have been some sort of activity on the roads.

  “Why isn't there traffic? What does that mean, no cars at all?” Bill stated out loud what I’d been wondering for over an hour.

  “I don’t know what it means, son.” My forty-one years granted me the privilege to address him this way. “Maybe there’s been some sort of terrorist attack or a natural disaster.” I snorted. “Hell, maybe it’s the end of the fucking world and we're the lucky ones who get to witness it.” I meant it as a joke, but as Bill’s face paled even further, I knew it was in bad taste.

  It was called the Emergency Alert System for a reason. Its use was designed to free the government up in a state or national emergency and help the citizens remain calm and orderly as they went to pre-arranged shelters or took whatever other actions Uncle Sam deemed appropriate. The brief advice this broadcast provided confused me, though. Basically, it told everyone to stay inside and hide. Hide from what?

  I walked over and squeezed Bill’s arm. “I’m sure it’s nothing, kid, but just in case, why don’t you and Johnnie head up to your dad’s old cabin? Me and Ted will go ahead and check things out. Once we find everything is fine, we’ll come get you, okay?”

  Bill looked uncertainly at Johnnie, who nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s hit the road, bro.”

  We all shook hands. A chill ran through my bones. What the hell was wrong with me? We’d be seeing each other in a few hours, so why did I feel like this was goodbye? I couldn’t escape the feeling as we reached the highway twenty minutes later, which was as eerily deserted as the back roads had been. Now I knew something was terribly wrong. We were only about two hours out of Bismark, a nothing drive for most Midwesterners; hell, even if there had been a nuclear war while we were eating Nessie, there should have been SOME traffic on the roads. While Ted and I headed for Devil’s Lake, the nearest small town, Johnnie and Bill headed toward the Black Hills, where their dad’s cabin lay.

  “I’m scared, Jaz.”

  I’d heard these words many times, but all the times before I had shaken them off as Ted’s God-given paranoid behavior. Now? They sent shivers up my spine.

  I reached across the console, and Ted grasped my open hand. His hard squeeze made me smile. “Semper Fi, buddy; let’s see what today brings.” Maybe the broadcast was a mistake. Perhaps the lack of traffic was due to the weather. Shit! Who was I kidding?

  It took a twenty-minute drive to banish the last tiny hope I’d held onto. We crested a rise between two hills and looked down upon Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, population 7,141. I stopped the car.

  Ted got out with me and looked at the small town below. “Looks quiet.”

  I opened the glove compartment and retrieved my binoculars. I passed them to Ted after a few moments. “Quiet? I’d say dead. Have a look.”

  Ted swore under his breath. The town was “quiet,” alright. It was mid-morning, and small town or not, Main Street should have been a buzz of activity. Instead, nothing. Not one car moved, and not one person was visible.

  “You drivin’?” Ted patted the pistol at his waist. I smiled. He was a better shot than me and we both knew it.

  “Yeah, just don’t shoot yourself in the foot, okay?”

  He grinned, his shoulders shaking with mirth. This was a family legend of epic proportion and had provided the traditional rant for every Thanksgiving meal for decades. Ted’s grandfather had shot himself in the foot two weeks into the Battle of Manila. While he sat there cussing a blue streak and allowing his foot to bleed all over the jeep, a fellow Marine drove him to Legarda Elementary School, which was the designated field hospital. Turns out, that specific jeep was one of the vehicles used by Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, and Gramps should have instructed his toe bleed somewhere else rather than inconvenience the Lieutenant General. Gramps had been ordered to scrub the damned jeep down with bleach all the while his left pinky toe had been throbbing even though it had been amputated clean off and not a single painkiller was issued! These Marines today were pussies, every one!

  “Just drive, bro. I got your back.”

  I grinned as Ted hopped into the bed of the pickup, and we drove down the incline. The trees obscured the town as the road twisted and turned, but eventually it opened up, and the bridge crossed the lazy river. My eyes darted back and forth as Ted perched on the top of the cab.

  “Anything?” I shouted through the open back window.

  “Nope.” Ted�
�s voice was tense. Last time I’d heard this tone was in Basra when we’d driven into an ambush. He’d been right then, too. Not many had made it out that night.

  The town was dead. Not obviously dead. The shops were all there, and the Halloween decorations littered the streets, but…

  “Where the fuck is everyone, Jaz?”

  I slowed the truck to a crawl. “I have no clue, bud.” My blood ran cold. I looked around. The shops were closed. There were only a few cars parked on the main street, and it should have been packed with shoppers this close to Christmas.

  I turned to Ted. “Whatever happened here…it happened at night, when everyone was asleep.”

  “Yeah.” He looked around. “No bodies. What the fuck, over?” Ted’s voice was cold, detached but I’d heard the tone before. I never thought I’d hear it on mainland USA.

  In Afghanistan, we’d driven through village after village that had been purged by the Taliban.

  This was somehow … worse.

  “Hold on, I’m going to take a drive around the ‘burbs.” I swung the wheel, taking a road to the right. Soon, the stores and businesses gave way to houses with well-manicured lawns and kids’ swing sets in the back yards. Lots of houses, all empty and dead. Lots of cars in the driveways, none of them packed for evacuation or flight. I pulled into a cul-de-sac, noticing dark marks smeared everywhere. My stomach lurched as I realized what it was.

  Ted got it too. “Blood, man – dried blood. Shit, it’s everywhere.”

  It was. It was on the road, sidewalks; hell, even the trees were splattered, and most of the houses’ windows were smashed. As I looked closer, I noticed something even weirder.

  “Ted, look at the houses. You see any glass on the outsides?”

  Ted cursed. “Fuck. They were smashed in from outside. This was a fucking massacre, man.”

  I made a decision. I called through the back window. “Ted, look out for a trailer. We need to grab one, head back to town, and stock it up. Then, we head back to your dad’s cabin and hole up until we figure this shit out.”

  “Oorah, buddy!” Ted replied.

  It took us thirty minutes of recon to find it, but we soon had a sturdy double-axle affair with plywood sides hooked up to my truck. I was about to get back in the driver’s seat when I heard that noise again. I walked slowly toward the remains of the wrecked door of one of the houses.

  “Hey, where ya goin’?” Ted asked.

  I held my hand up, fist clenched, the military signal for “hold.” Ted immediately drew his weapon and followed me in. The house was a ruin, furniture destroyed, all interior doors either hanging off their hinges or lying in splinters.

  “What the fuck is that?!” Ted stood pointing to a wall in the living room. It was covered in blood, and worse, but that wasn’t what had drawn Ted's eyes. Gouged into the drywall was a line of parallel marks. Claw marks, but unlike anything I’d seen before. I knew what bear marks looked like. They used their claws to mark their territory on the bark of trees, and I'd seen plenty of huge, deep gouges. These were five, maybe six times the size. Fuck!

  Then I heard the sound again; a slight whimpering coming from somewhere close. Somewhere beneath our feet. I looked down. The area rug had been knocked into a corner, so the hatch in the floor was visible. I beckoned for Ted to cover me while I knelt and grabbed the recessed handle. It rose easily, powered by a couple of hydraulic risers. Immediately, the stench of death and human feces assaulted my nostrils.

  I pulled the mini-LED flashlight from my cargo pants pocket, shining it down into the darkness. A set of wooden steps descended into the shadows, and they creaked as I stepped on them. My flashlight revealed shelves stocked with canned food and other emergency supplies. Clearly, whoever lived here had been a survival freak. I coughed to clear my throat, but the whimper turned into a growl as my light reflected off a set of shining eyes.

  The dog stood with its haunches up, guarding a figure slumped against the back wall. It was a woman. She held a pump action shotgun in her limp arms, but dark blood pooled beneath her. The front of her chest was a bloody mess, but the dog didn’t care. It was protecting its mistress.

  I knelt down. It wasn’t a big dog, and I was more concerned for its safety than mine. How long had it been down here?

  “Good dog,” I cooed, inching closer. “Who’s a good doggie?” I reached into my pocket, breaking a piece from the slab of chocolate I’d grabbed for the drive. I knew dogs, and I knew chocolate was toxic in large doses. I also knew that dogs didn’t care. Chocolate was their catnip.

  It worked. It started with a twitch of the tail. I laid the flashlight on the ground and held the small chunk out a bit further. The dog took the bait and crawled slowly toward me. It was long-haired and had a mottled coat. I couldn’t tell the true colors in the darkness of the basement, but I saw its eyes. One was pale, almost white. The other was dark. It snatched the chocolate, retreating to the side of its mistress, but it let me approach. I rubbed it behind the ears, and it lay down, submitting to me as it…she…rolled over onto her back.

  “Good girl.” I spotted a collar and turned it over until the name disk flashed in the light. “Tray. Good girl, Tray.” What sort of dog name was Tray?

  “You okay down there?” Ted called from above.

  “Yeah, looks like we have our first survivor.”

  “Good. Maybe they can tell us what the fuck happened?”

  I doubt that.

  I rubbed the short fur on her belly. “Come on, girl. We have to go.” She whimpered and rolled upright, stepping toward me, then hesitating. She moved back to her mistress, and I was afraid I would have to pull the dog from her. However, Tray stood up, her forepaws on the woman’s chest and sniffed, her tail wagging hopefully. After a moment, her tail stopped wagging and tucked itself tightly under her body as she came to me. I held her gently around the midriff, supporting her as I climbed. “Come on, Tray. I’ll look after you now.” Ted’s face when I emerged with our “survivor” was priceless.

  “A dog? A damned mutt?” Ted turned around and kicked the remains of the window frame. “And here was me thinking we’d get some answers to this clusterfuck.”

  “Her name’s Tray,” I said, scratching her behind the ears again. Looking down, I saw the dried blood smeared across the floor, starting at the door and ending at the lip of the trapdoor. “Looks like her mistress dragged herself across the floor to the cellar, then closed the door after her. Whatever broke in couldn’t work out how to find her.”

  Ted’s brows furrowed. “Mistress?”

  I indicated the hole in the ground, and he understood, nodding. He came over and rubbed Tray’s head. “Guess we got a new team member, eh, bro?” Tray licked his hand, and he smiled. Now that she was out in the light, I saw her coat. It was blood-splattered, of course, but none of the blood seemed to be hers. Her long fur was a mix of whites, browns, russets, and grays. She was a beautiful dog, a border collie at my best guess, but her beautiful, mismatched eyes suggested a bit of husky.

  “We better go.” I looked outside. It was about two in the afternoon, but we had a hell of a lot to do. “C’mon, Tray. You can ride with me. Caveman is in back.”

  Ted snorted but didn’t object as we drove back into town.

  Ten minutes later, we stood looking at the barred windows of the hardware store. “Now, this might be a problem,” I said.

  Ted chuckled, crossing to one of the cars parked on the mostly deserted strip. He broke the window with the butt of his pistol, the sound causing Tray to yelp and retreat to the floor of the cab. He smashed the steering column with the butt, ripping a rainbow of wires down. I knew what he was doing. We’d all been taught it. Hot-wiring 101. How to escape when caught behind enemy lines. I never thought we’d use it here.

  The car roared to life. Ted backed it up. It was a Rabbit, so he’d need a run up.

  “Hey, asshole,” I called. “Remember that one’s so old it doesn’t have air bags.”

  Ted flipped me
the bird before gunning the engine and hitting the hardware store window at about thirty miles per hour. That had to hurt, but he emerged from what remained of the car and bent bars with the normal scowl on his face.

  “Yup.” He straightened up, slowly. “That hurt.” He narrowed his eyes at me in a “don’t tell me I told you so” look.

  The first thing I did was let Tray out to walk around. I filled a water bowl, which she emptied gratefully before trotting off to pee, her tail already less tucked than it had been. She knew this town. She was lucky to have survived so long, down there with no water. How long had she been down there? The woman had passed out of rigor, which generally took eighteen hours or so, but rigor didn't start until several hours after death…right? So…what? A day? Two? I couldn't narrow it down more than that, which annoyed me. It was either training I'd forgotten, or, more likely, blown off because that fat frog of a Senior Chief Harrison was a short-timer counting down to his retirement and he didn't give a shit if he even did his job … not that he ever had. He'd cheesedicked the Corps out of twenty years, but Daddy knew somebody and that kind of pull kept him from getting Ninja Punched time and again. I should know. It was the same kind of pull that got me out of the USMC when I needed to take care of Tommy.

  The reasoning behind hitting the hardware store first was sound. Inside, we’d find the means to break into the other stores. I smiled, imagining Ted hitting the grocery store and then trying to use cucumbers against the hardened glass of the not-so-automatic doors. Freudian slip, much? Nah. Sometimes a cucumber was just a cucumber.

  Bolt cutters did the job in most cases, angle grinders took care of the more stubborn barriers. Ted dropped a crate filled with canned goods from the mini-mart into the trailer, before heading back in for more. Between us, the trailer was soon half-filled with tools, gear and canned supplies

  I kept trying different dog foods for Tray. She must have been starving, but she wouldn’t eat any of the dried kibble. After politely sniffing each one, she looked up with those peculiar eyes, gazing balefully at me in refusal. Nope…not happening. I ain’t eating that shit.