I saw the dim shapes racing after us…gaining on us. My heart shook in my chest, and when I would remember this moment later, I would have no idea where I’d gotten the resolve. I grabbed Mr. Shotgun from behind Jaz's seat, fighting the acceleration as I scrambled over my seat to the broken back window, only then noticing the blood on the glass and trickling down the bench seat. I felt sick to my stomach over what Jaz had been about to do to Tray, even if part of me could see why he might have thought it was our only choice. I felt a momentary spark of shame over my rage and disgust at him as I realized how desperate his choice had been, but it still didn’t touch the anger. Tray was our – at least, my – family! How dare he? I was still going to rip him a new asshole when…if… we escaped.
I had no time for that now, so I shoved my anger and grief to the back of my mind as I chambered a shell. I knew the gun was loaded with specials, as Jaz liked to call them. I pointed the weapon out the shattered rear window, in time to see a wicked talon grab the side of the truck bed. I took aim, but the pickup hit a pothole and the thundering shot went wide. A roar of pain told me it had at least hit something, but my heart stuttered as a creature from my deepest, darkest nightmares vaulted over the side to land less than two feet away from me.
It was … teeth. All claws, jagged, wicked shark teeth, and fur. I thanked God the airflow prevented any scent the monster might emit from reaching me. I could only imagine how sickening that might be. For the shortest instant, I was frozen in horror. My eyes widened, and I felt a shock of ice spear my spine, making me wonder for a moment if maybe it wouldn't be better to just die, to rejoin my family in the Heaven Father Ted had always promised me waited. They wanted me with them …
I cocked the shotgun, expelling the spent shell to load another. In one fluid moment, both the Treater and I acted.
It lunged for the opening of the window. I aimed and fired. The creature’s head and mouth opened wide as it jumped, and the shotgun’s barrel was half buried in its jaw when the blast took its head off. I hadn’t had time to properly brace the stock against my shoulder, so the recoil knocked me back into the cabin, and I grunted in pain as I fell into the footwell behind the driver’s seat.
Shit! My pulse sang in my veins. I’d killed one of them. Another loud thump at the back of the pickup sent my momentary elation scurrying to hide somewhere deep inside me. I pumped the action again, just in time to see a head appearing at the window. This time, the creature got enough of its head and torso inside that its fetid breath filled the cabin, and Tray lunged at it, her jaws clamping around the monster’s throat.
I gagged, but managed to keep it together long enough to aim, being careful not to hit Tray, and blow a hole in its chest. Its roar of pain and defiance echoed through the inside of the cab, and the Treater snapped its murderous maw once, twice, before slumping down, blocking the opening. I silently cursed.
I’d have to push it out of the way to clear the next shot, but that wasn’t going to happen. The thing was enormous. My eyes narrowed at the same moment my stomach clenched in disgust and revulsion. The thing was…less enormous? Seriously, it was melting before my eyes, thick, steaming, dripping goo flowing down onto the back seat. Eww! GROSS!
Tray whimpered as she let go of the monster's throat, retreating as far as my makeshift leash would allow. If it smelled this bad to me, it must be a cesspool for her.
Bile rose in my throat. I needed to get back up into firing position; to keep them away from us long enough for Jaz to get us going fast enough to outrun them.
My ears were ringing from the combination of the creature’s scream, Tray’s shrill barking, and the shotgun blast in the confined space of the cabin. I could hear Jaz shouting something, but I couldn’t make it out as I finally managed to get back into position at the rear window. Pumping the action, I took aim again, ready for the next attack. Only it didn’t come. The city of Deadwood receded into the night, illuminated in ghostly relief by the last remnants of the setting sun staining the sky.
Through the ringing in my ears, I could finally make out Jaz screaming. Only he wasn’t screaming. He was whooping. Whooping and laughing. As the ringing gradually subsided, I let myself believe it. We’d made it…this time.
I slumped into the seat, the adrenaline rush only slowly dissipating. I was covered in stinking, slimy goo, and all I wanted was a long, hot bubble bath. I caught Jaz’s twinkling grin in the rearview mirror, and part of me wanted to grin back. I didn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to offer even a shred of forgiveness, not yet. We were safe, for the moment, but as I reached over and unbuckled my belt from around Tray’s collar, I started crying. She jumped into my lap, and I immediately hugged her close to me. She licked me, carefully avoiding any of the green…blood? fluid?…from the Treater. I glanced up to see Jaz’s stare soften, and I looked away. I knew he had only wanted to give Tray mercy, but I cried, and I kept crying until I dropped into a restless sleep full of wet, sloppy kisses and huge, raking talons.
Chapter Twelve
When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse
Jaz
Jennifer still wasn’t talking to me. Shit, she wouldn’t even sit in the passenger seat, instead staying in the back with Tray, who also stared at me balefully any time I glanced in the mirror. Logic told me the dog couldn’t possibly know what I’d almost done, but her expression said otherwise. She knew the mama was mad at me, and clearly, she believed in the solidarity of sisterhood.
“Jennifer,” I said, after we had hit the Wyoming line and I'd been driving close to an hour. “I feel like shit.”
“Good.”
I slumped my shoulders. “Okay, I deserve that. I didn’t think we had any other choice…”
Her snort cut me off. “We? WE? When was the decision to murder our dog even passed by me?”
“Okay, okay, fine. It was me, all right?”
“Right. You’re a fucking asshole”
Tray barked in agreement; at least, it appeared that way. She could just as well have been barking because we hadn't let her do her business since shortly past Deadwood. I'd expected to have to clean a mess in the truck, but there had been nothing; she had held it for more than eight hours. The moment we'd dared our first stop, though, she had had watered and fertilized the same lucky bush for what seemed like a week.
I knew I couldn’t win, because I was a fucking asshole. No matter what Jennifer thought of me, it couldn’t match the guilt I felt already. And still … given the same situation, the same odds, the same information I had when the choice needed to be made … I would have made the same decision. I stayed silent for another twenty miles before trying again. “All I could see in my mind, was Tray getting out the window and being ripped apart by those monsters. When I thought she’d died back at Johnnie’s cabin, it ruined me, Jennifer. It had only taken a day, but that damn dog had gotten so far under my skin, I didn’t think I could go on without her. I couldn’t go on…alone.”
Jennifer stayed silent. I took that as a good sign and continued. Truthfully, I was just glad she wasn’t yelling at me. “I couldn’t let her be killed like that, and I’m sorry for not being as quick-witted as you were. I was scared, Jennifer. I didn’t want to lose Tray,” I saw her shoulders tense in the rearview mirror, and I knew she was listening. “but I would have done anything, if it meant not losing you.”
She seemed to consider my words but continued to ignore me, and I drove in painful, uncomfortable silence as Jennifer gave Tray loving adoration, a share of which – at another time – I could have dutifully claimed as my own.
We were both silent for too long, and I began to feel as though the damage I’d done was permanent. I began brooding, watching the headlights eat up the miles. It took me several moments to notice Jenn was looking at me, Tray settled snuggly on her lap. The dog complained when Jenn pushed her aside to clamber into the front passenger seat, but seconds later she got over her indignation and jumped through the gap between the seats to settle back on Jennifer’s lap.
The damned dog was still taking her cues directly from whatever pheromones or body language Jennifer was emitting and giving me that, ‘I’m gonna shit in your shoes, later,’ look. I made a mental note to check them before stepping into them.
“You willing to talk?” Jennifer asked me.
I almost hit the brake in surprise. Me? Was I willing to talk? I'd been trying to talk for over an hour, being shut down time and again!
I nodded carefully, afraid to do or say anything more. This had to be in the territory Ted had covered about a year or so into the Corps, when he deemed me ready for the “women are irrational aliens” talk. It had lasted well over three hours, with us drunk for two of them, and it made a hundred percent sense then, as it did now.
“Things are different for me, now, Jaz,” Jennifer said, quietly. “I've always been…different…about animals, but now?” she shrugged. “I understand what you were doing. We had to get out, human life is more precious than animal life, it was Tray or us, right?”
I nodded again, still carefully.
She shook her head firmly. There was absolutely no compromise in her eyes when they met mine. “I don't feel like that anymore. I feel like we are the only three left, and life – any life – is sacred and precious.” She took a deep breath. “I know there will come a time when you have to choose between us, Jaz. It’s a given. Choose yourself, please. I won't think badly of you, I swear it. But for me…when the time comes, leave me. Walk away. I ca – I won't watch anyone else I love die.”
I sat stunned, my attention divided between Jennifer and the road as the meaning of her words echoed in my brain. What she was asking was…?
“It's the only way for me, Jaz,” she said softly. “Do I have your word? As a Marine?”
My word.
As a Marine.
Something doubly sacred, and something I didn't think I could give, nor honor if I did. I shot a quick glance at Jennifer. Her eyes were sober, uncompromising. She left me no choice. Slowly, I nodded.
Jennifer exhaled, closing her eyes in relief. She had not been bluffing. Jesus!
“I guess we can forgive you then.” She rubbed the hair behind Tray’s ears. “What'cha say, girl? Will we let the big, bad man off the hook?”
I swore the dog cocked her head to one side, considering the question, before padding the gap between the seats to lick the back of my elbow as I steered the car. My eyes stung, as much at the ridiculous magnanimity of the dog's gesture as the realization that she was still here. They both were. Both my girls were still with me.
Jennifer reached over to take my hand off the wheel. She squeezed it gently, and I raised her hand up to kiss the back of it.
“Did we just have our first fight?” she asked.
“We did.”
“I hated it.”
“Me, too.”
I wanted to pull the car over and take her in my arms, to kiss her and tell her I loved her, but as my eyes met hers, I knew there was no need. She knew.
“You know one of the best parts about having a fight?” I asked.
Jennifer adopted a coy expression. “No, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
I grinned. “Makeup sex.”
To her credit, she blushed. It was hard to see in the dim light of the dash, but it was definitely there. I chuckled. I knew I was still an asshole, but in that moment, I knew I was their asshole. I kinda loved that.
“What’s so funny?” Jennifer asked.
“I dunno, I had this image of that scene in Forrest Gump, where he and Jenny make up after a fight.”
Jennifer grinned, and then recited in a bad southern drawl, “Jenny and me was like peas and carrots again.”
And so we were. I pushed the console up and reached over, pulling her into me, Tray immediately squirming into a comfortable position between us. “Exactly.”
***
What should have been a three-hour drive to Casper, Wyoming, turned into nearly eleven hours of backtracking to avoid blocked roads and major population centers. We didn’t dare enter a town big enough to have the potential for Treaters seeking leftovers, so it was slow going finding the roundabout ways to head west.
The provisional route I’d originally plotted was dust on the wind now, and we were using the paper maps and atlases my dad always insisted on keeping in the truck for the time when “all that damn new-fangled shit runs out of batt'ry.” It seemed that South Dakota and Wyoming had had at least a few hours of warning, and the freeways and major roads around the cities were giant parking lots…or slaughterhouses, depending on your perspective.
“What happened, Jaz?” Jennifer asked, when we’d finally pulled into a rest stop on the outskirts of the city, the sun cresting the eastern horizon and turning the sky to burnished brass. Tray was off somewhere, doing what dogs do, and Jennifer and I sat on a picnic table, munching dry cereal and drinking our morning coffee. We had both been hyped up on adrenaline from the close call and I had encouraged her to sleep when she could. I'd driven the night, and I was going to need a few hours of sleep myself, soon.
I breathed deeply. I hadn’t shared my theory with her yet, but I decided it was time. I was pretty sure she’d figured out most of it.
“The attack…the extermination on Halloween?” I began.
She nodded.
“That was just to get rid of the vermin infesting the planet…you know, us? I think their main goal is the planet itself. Not our technology, not even our resources.” I paused, waiting for Jennifer’s expression to reveal she thought I’d gone crazy, but it remained fixed and attentive. She had figured out a good chunk of it, then. Good. “Whatever is out there is draining the actual life essence from every living thing on Earth, and then from the planet. The attack was step one, and it allowed the Treaters to feed.” I paused. “Last night, did you see how many of them were chasing us?”
Jennifer’s brows furrowed. “It was dark, and I was scared to death, but… maybe a dozen?”
“Yeah, that’s about what I counted, too.” I paused, shoveling in another bite of dry Raisin Bran. “Now, do you think a dozen of those sons-of-bitches might have been enough to overcome a city…a small city, granted, that didn't have much in the way of prior warning, but probably enough to have a few hundred National Guardsmen on the ground and dug in?”
Jennifer seemed to mull the thought over in her head before replying. “Maybe? It sounds unlikely, but our weapons can’t kill them. You told me as much. All bullets do is to knock them down, but they’re up and running a few seconds later, right?”
“Right. But think back. Besides the blood everywhere, did you see any major damage to the buildings downtown?”
Her expression grew thoughtful again before she shook her head. “I don’t think so. Only on television, in places we were tossing nukes around, in any case.”
“Jennifer, keep it on Deadwood for now. If it had been only a dozen or so Treaters, the city would have shown evidence of a battle. The soldiers would have set ambushes, used anti-tank missiles…there would have been rubble everywhere.” I stopped to let the image sink in and was rewarded with an acknowledging nod. “So, tell me what you think happened?”
She was quiet for a long moment, trying to reconstruct what had happened in her home town with the limited knowledge she possessed. I saw the moment it dawned on her.
“There were more than a dozen Treaters. There had to be!”
I nodded. “There must have been hundreds – more likely thousands – of them. Enough to completely overwhelm any defense.”
Jennifer nodded slowly, but then looked at me, a confused challenge on her face. “So, where are they now? And why leave any Treaters behind at all if everyone was already dead…oh.”
I nodded as Jennifer added up the pieces.
“To pick up any stragglers, like you and me, right?”
“Right."
“So, what you’re saying,” she paused, getting it straight in her head before continuing, “is that after the initial a
ttack and…purge, for want of a better word, whatever is controlling these things changed tactics. Now, they’re draining all the life energy from the Earth itself?”
“Not just life energy, like the trees and stuff, but all forms of energy.” I sat still, staring into space, my favorite way to order my thoughts. I held up my watch and my once-again-dead cell phone. “I may be wrong, Jenn, but I think whatever is draining the power from the forests isn’t strong enough to drain the life energy from living beings – people, I mean, and animals and birds. That’s why the Treaters were sent in first, to knock out whatever mobile species could fight back. Now, the second wave has no resistance, it can take its time and slowly suck the Earth dry.”
Jennifer turned to me, her expression grim. “Jaz, that is one pretty screwed-up theory.”
“You got a better one?”
She took a moment to ponder, before shaking her head. “Nope, I’m all aboard with the screwed-up theory thing. I just can't tell you how much I hate it.”
I smiled, and realized it was the first time I’d smiled since waking up in Jennifer’s bed…only twelve hours ago?
We cleaned up after our meal, dumping the litter in the properly provided receptacle. Habit. No one would be emptying that trash anytime soon.
We retrieved Tray and spent a couple of hours navigating our way around Casper, finding a Hilton on the western edge of town to bed down in for the day. If we were going to sleep, why not do so in style, right? The hotel even had an underground car park for us to spend the night in, before setting off the next day.
The hotel wasn’t pretty, and we almost decided to sleep in the truck. The chaos in the lobby was grimly familiar by now. The difference was many of the upper floors’ rooms had contained paying guests, and each floor had several doors burst open. We didn’t bother looking inside.
Treaters: Book One of the Divine Conflict. Page 16