Treaters: Book One of the Divine Conflict.

by CJ Rutherford

  The trek started out okay, considering we couldn’t even sleep anywhere near touching distance now, for fear of the Treaters homing in on our combined life energy, or whatever it was that made us so tasty. The first night was fine. We hunkered down in hideouts a dozen or so yards from each other, within talking distance, at least.

  I was looking up at the half-moon above us. We played a game of truth or dare, only the dares were kind of moot, bearing in mind we were both half buried in dead leaves. So, it became a game of truth and lies.

  Jaz’s first question was a doozy, the bastard. I had to tell him the worst lie I’d ever told. It took me a while, and, even as I remembered, it I cringed inwardly. I imagined he could feel my blush from where he lay against a rocky overhang. But I trusted him, and let’s face it, he wasn’t about to tell anyone else, was he?

  “Okay…” I hesitated. God, I couldn’t believe I was about to tell him. I’d never told anyone. Not my mom, not Jessica, not even my best friends at school. “One night, me and a few of the guys went to a party.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jaz said. I could hear the amusement in his tone.

  “I may have gotten a little drunk…and I may have smoked a little pot.” When he began to chuckle, I said, “But that’s not the worst of it.”

  Jaz’s laughter subsided. “So, there’s more? More than smoking pot? Princess, you are a rebel!”

  I smiled along with the crooked grin I knew was plastered on his face. “Yeah, well when I got home, I felt kinda sick, so I ran into the downstairs bathroom.” I closed my eyes, willing myself to continue and get this over with. I felt mortified. “Did I say kinda sick? Oh, boy, that's an understatement. I didn’t make the toilet bowl. I projectile vomited over the back wall of the bathroom…where my mom had hung the dress she was returning to the store the next day.”

  A low whistle came from Jaz’s hiding spot, but I went on.

  “It was really expensive, and my mom had worn it just the once the previous night to one of my dad’s work functions, to impress the other wives. She’d managed to get away with taping the tag up inside the skirt, but now…”

  “You were screwed.”

  “I was screwed.”

  “So, what’d you do?” he asked.

  I clenched my teeth and fists, before squeaking, “I blamed the cat.”

  Jaz was silent for a long moment, before he started to chuckle. The chuckle became a full-on belly-laugh. After a few seconds, my annoyance bubbled to the surface, but dissipated quickly. I’d carried this around with me for years, but now that I’d told someone, it was a little bit funny…not much, though.

  “Okay, wise ass,” I said, trying my best not to giggle. “Your turn.”

  Jaz calmed down enough to speak, “I don’t think I can compete with that one. Just sayin’. You blamed the cat!” He degenerated into a snorting mess of laughter on the forest floor, but after a minute or so composed himself enough for me to continue.

  “Let’s try truth this time, since you’re so high and mighty.” I thought hard. What might be as hard for him to answer as his question had been for me? I thought about asking him who his first love was, but that territory was too dangerous.

  “Who was your first crush?” There. That wasn’t so bad. I settled down a little too smugly. Jaz was quiet. The silence extended until it seemed he was a mile away, not a few yards. “I’m sorry, if you don’t want to answer that’s okay.” I felt terrible. Had Sherri been his first crush? It seemed unlikely, but who knew?

  He huffed a long sigh. “It’s fine.” He was silent for another moment. “Her name was Rhonda. I met her the day I arrived at the orphanage. A couple of the older boys had decided to show me who was in charge around there, and Rhonda took offense to their methods.” He paused, and somehow, I knew he was smiling at the memory. “I had never seen anyone take down two boys almost twice her size using nothing but words, but she did it.

  “From that day on, I loved her. Oh, looking back, I know it was just a crush; I was nine, she was eleven. She was beautiful even then, and I was all gangly arms and legs.”

  I smiled at the thought. I couldn’t imagine this rock of a man being the slightest bit gangly.

  “We became best friends, spent most of our time together, got into a lot of trouble…got out of a lot of trouble.” He laughed quietly. “I loved her, but I never thought she felt the same way until the night before she was due to be shipped out to a new foster home on her sixteenth birthday.” Jaz was silent for so long I was about to ask what had happened.

  “She snuck into the dorms and woke me up, dragged me into one of the broom closets, and…you know.”

  I gasped. “Jaz Goldberg, you lost your virginity in a broom closet?”

  I could almost sense his grimace, but his voice was low, tinged with sadness. I wanted to ask him, but knew I had no right to pressure him to go on if it was too painful.

  “She left the next day. We wrote a letter a week for almost a year. Then I found out I was being fostered again, and it was a short bus ride between where she lived and where my new jailers lived. She’d been through two foster homes in the year since she left. She tried to sound upbeat in the letters, but I knew she hated them.”

  “I bet she was happy when she found out you were going to be close to her,” I said. Jeeze, this was sort of heart-breaking.

  Jaz snorted. “I thought she might be, but her next letter told me to stay away; to never contact her again. That I was a stupid kid with a crush and that I was to leave her alone. She even threatened to bring stalking charges, which could have ruined any chance I had for the military.”

  My heart constricted in my chest, and tears welled in my eyes. I desperately wanted to get up and run to Jaz, to embrace him. “I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s more.” His voice was thick with emotion. “After I got fostered near her, I tried sending her a few more letters, but they were returned unopened with ‘Return to sender,’ written in a handwriting I didn’t recognize.” More silence.

  “After the third letter,” he said, his voice barely audible, “it took me a week to drum up the courage to take the bus to her address. When I knocked at the door, there was no answer. I tried again and kept knocking louder, actually slapping the door with my hand. I was looking through the window when the next-door neighbor came out and asked me if she could help me – in that overly polite, “I’m about to call the cops,” tone of voice. When I told her I was looking for Rhonda, her expression went all weird. She took me into her home and made me sit down while she made coffee. We sat there drinking it while she explained that Rhonda’s foster father had been arrested for her rape and murder, over a month earlier.”

  Oh shit! I had no words. What could I say to this?

  “It’s okay, Jennifer,” he said softly. “It was my choice to answer the question. I’ve never told anyone that story, you know that? Not Sherri, or her brothers. But I wanted someone – I wanted you to know, and I’m sorry if it upset you.”

  Tears flowed down my cheeks, a few sliding into my ears. I wanted him in my arms more than ever. I wanted to tell him how privileged I felt that he’d shared this with me. “Thank you, Jaz. Thank you,” I whispered. We didn’t talk anymore, and before long I heard Jaz’s gentle snoring. I didn’t get much sleep that night…or the next.

  ***

  Jaz

  On the third night, something changed. We spent the entire night wondering if we were going to live to see the next day, as Treaters scoured the forest looking for something; looking for us. How had they found us? Jennifer was over twenty yards away, half buried in the soft soil at the edge of a field. I was similarly covered from head to toe, but still, every few minutes I heard the clicking and clacking of one or more of the creatures. Thankfully, day four dawned before they found us.

  By my reckoning, we had another one, maybe two nights before we reached San Francisco. What we’d do when we got there, I hadn’t a clue. Back at the lodge, it had seemed like a pipe-dream we’d even ge
t this far, and that if we did, we were “home free.” Now, we were so close, but it seemed the possibility of finding safety at Alcatraz was further away than ever.

  The next town we walked through, we found more bicycles. I also picked up a couple of heavy canvas sheets, and some water-proof sleeping bags, and that night we had our first dry night in over a week. Instead of smearing ourselves with mud, I had the idea of coating the sleeping bags instead, then draping the tarp overhead like a tent, before covering that in dead leaves. It had worked.

  Jennifer woke the next morning with the first smile I’d seen on her face in days, and we stole a couple of hours of daylight to have a little “us time” in a quaint little bed and breakfast. I cursed the time wasted when dusk began to fall on day five. Looking at the map, the hills ahead marked the last rise to clear before we began the run down to San Francisco itself. If I’d only kept it in my pants, we could have been there before nightfall.

  Jennifer had berated me, scolding me for saying any time getting down and dirty with her was a waste of time. I’d agreed, at the time, and we’d set up the hideouts after applying fresh mud from a nearby stream.

  ***

  Now, though, I knew I’d fucked up big time. My lungs burnt, desperate to release the air trapped within, but over the thundering pulse in my head, I heard the footsteps halt. The Treater was only feet away from me, and I heard it taste the air. The sound was guttural, and the clicks and clacks of its teeth grinding together had me clenching my fists.

  I was dead. So fucking dead. Fuck. Stupid...stupid...stupid.

  I heard scrabbling, and mutterings in the alien language that jarred my soul, begging me to run, to attempt a futile escape. It swept its claws through the undergrowth, coming mere inches from my skin.

  Its stench threatened my gag reflex, and I felt bile rise at the back of my throat. I prayed the mud I’d covered the sleeping bag with would be enough to mask the smell of fear emanating from my pores.

  I recoiled, desperately trying to sink magically into the ground, as the claw raked the leaves off the cloth cover inches above my face, freezing as my grip tightened on the pump action Remington, waiting for it to rip its razor-sharp spears across my body. Sure, the special ammo in the shotgun would kill this one, but they never hunted alone, and these things ruled the night.

  No, I had to hide. It was our only hope of survival.

  It moved again, and I said a silent prayer as it passed me by. I released the air from my aching lungs as the creature receded, my heart settling back inside my rib cage. I hoped Jennifer was as lucky in her hideout.

  I still didn’t understand how they kept finding us. The double camouflage of the muddied sleeping bags combined with the covered tarpaulin should have improved the hideout, but they still found us. Maybe not tonight I realized, breathing a sigh of relief as they shuffled away from my hiding place. I relaxed my grip on the gun and settled down, the adrenaline beginning to dissipate as a wave of fatigue washed over me.

  Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow we’d find a boat and ride out to the Rock, to Alcatraz, and, hopefully, to safety.

  Jennifer’s scream split the night, at the same time it rent my soul from my body. I didn’t think. I was up in an instant, running to where I’d left her, secure in a dried-up stream bed, covered and hidden.

  She screamed again. That was a good thing, right? Screaming meant she was still alive, didn’t it? I felt my gorge rise. Screaming meant she was scared or in pain, probably both.

  As I ran, I cursed my decision to put some extra distance between us, just in case. It took me under twenty seconds to run the hundred yards across the uneven forest floor, but when I got there, I saw a sight that stopped my heart from beating.

  The Treater was huge, over twelve feet tall, and more humanoid than any other I’d seen. It stood erect, not stooped over like the others, and as I gazed into its molten red eyes, a spark of recognition awoke inside me. I’d seen this one before. The night Ted had died.

  It laughed. Yeah, I knew this time it was definitely a laugh and it chilled me to the bone, but not as much as what it held in its foot-long talons.

  Jennifer’s bloodied sleeping bag hung shredded to pieces from its claws. I searched the clearing for any sign of her, but, of course, found nothing. Treaters were efficient killers. Skin, bone, all were consumed in an instant after the kill. They were the only predator I’d ever known that even ate the intestines.

  Jennifer was dead. Most of my soul died at that moment, but what was left rose up in rage, and I screamed. I pulled the shotgun into my shoulder and fired. And fired again. And again, screaming the entire time, my vision obscured by the red of rage and the muzzle flashes. I’d take this fucker with me if it was the last thing I did. I kept firing, kept screaming.

  The gun clicked on empty at the same time I stopped screaming. I fell to my knees, waiting for the smoke to clear. I wanted to look the piece of shit in the eyes as it melted away, but I cried out again. The only thing left was the tattered remains of Jennifer’s sleeping bag, even more ruined now. The creature was gone.

  ***

  I don’t know how long I knelt there with the shotgun hanging loosely in my hands. It could have been minutes. It might have been hours.

  All I knew is that by the time I’d broken myself out of the numbness, my knees ached and the sun had fully risen.

  I had something in my hands, I realized. I looked down to see a few scraps of fabric. The blue color was marred with some sort of dark red stain, and I dimly remembered my wife’s advice on what to do if you got blood on a shirt. Blood. Yes, that’s what it was, blood. But how did blood get out here in this lovely forest?

  It came flooding back, and the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding came out as a sob. I held the remnants of Jennifer’s sleeping bag in my hands. I couldn’t remember retrieving them.

  I looked around. This was all they’d left me. A few bloodied scraps of fabric. This was all that remained from a beautiful, vibrant woman who had spent less than twenty years on this world. It wasn’t enough, but at that moment it was all I had, so I bundled it up, held it to my chest, and wept.

  “I’m sorry.” I said it, time over time. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  It must have been noon by the time I stood up and gathered my pack, and began to walk. It took me a little over an hour to crest the hill, and I shaded my eyes as the midday sun glistened off the waters of the San Francisco Bay.

  We’d gotten so close. In the distance was the Golden Gate Bridge, and, closer to me, easily visible to the naked eye, was a tiny island in the middle of the bay. Alcatraz.

  Maybe it was a safe place. Maybe I’d been right, and it was the last safe place in America, surrounded by salt water seas, with underground caverns to hide in and quick, easy access to food and medical supplies. Maybe it was all of that and more, but I wasn’t going to find out.

  No, this had been our dream. I walked a few hundred yards down the slope so I could find a spot with an uninterrupted view of the bay. I dropped my rucksack beside a tree and sat down with my back against it, reaching in to pull out a bottle of water. No sense getting dehydrated, was there?

  I spent the day watching the world go by, not that there was much to watch. There were no seagulls left, and the bay was empty of shipping, the same way the city in the distance was empty of people or traffic.

  All the same, I knew Jennifer would have loved it, and I spent the day feeling her with all of my heart. She’d wanted to see the ocean. We’d gotten so close.

  I must have dozed off in the heat of the afternoon, but I awoke to the most spectacular sunset I’d ever seen. Hues of gold mixed with indigo and red as the sun dipped into the ocean.

  Behind me, over the crest of the hill in the shadows, I knew the Treaters were gathering, waiting for the sun to finally set. I hadn’t bothered to hide myself, so I supposed I was like one of those neon lights that hung in the windows of road-side diners that flashed the words, ‘Free Dinner.’r />
  I finished the last of the water and packed it away in the sack. I wouldn't be a litterbug, even if it was the end of the world.

  As the last rays of the sun faded from the sky, the air was filled with the guttural screams and roars, clicks and clacks of the abominations from Hell. I cocked my Glock and put its barrel in my mouth, angling it carefully up and center.

  The Treaters were feet away when I put my finger on the trigger, squeezing gently.

  You won’t take me, you fuckers.

  Epilogue

  I floated in a sea of nothing. I had no arms, no legs, not even a body. There seemed to be a current of some sort, drawing me along, although I felt no actual sense of movement.

  I looked with non-existent eyes at the bright light growing closer, and I tried to shield my eyes with a hand that wasn’t there.

  I supposed I was experiencing what amputees feel, the sensation of ghost limbs, feeling an arm or a leg when it’s been lost; only this had to be both ten times worse and better. There was no pain where my body had been, but I simply…wasn’t. I felt like I didn’t exist. My disembodied brain drifted inexorably toward the light, and I wondered what I’d done to deserve a place in Heaven. The light had to be Heaven, right? I’d read all the stories about near-death experiences, but after I’d put a 9mm slug into my brain, I was pretty sure I wasn’t coming back from that one.

  ‘Can you bring him back?’

  If I’d still possessed a body, it would have jumped in shock, like on all those medical TV shows where the serious-toned doctor says, “Clear.” The voice, a woman’s voice I thought, seemed like it was right beside me, speaking into my ear, and at the same time echoing from far away.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said another voice, this time male. ‘It has been an age since I’ve had to bring a soul back from this close. He’s not going to be happy we let him shoot himself, you do realize?’