Dogsoldiers

by James Tarr

  Praise for Tarr’s previous novels:

  Bestiarii—

  “Grab a handful of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World, stir in a generous helping of Jurassic Park, and season with a sprig of fresh Tom Clancy and you have the makings of Bestiarii. James Tarr takes the reader on a heart-pounding trip through a dystopian landscape, where human enemies are the least of our concerns. Bringing his encyclopedic knowledge of the firearms world to bear, the author grips his audience with finely-observed technical details and highly relatable characters.”

  —Iain Harrison

  Editor, Recoil magazine

  Season One winner of the History Channel TV series Top Shot

  “I love this book…a cross between Zero Dark Thirty and Jurassic Park. A wonderful romp.”

  —Michael Bane

  Whorl—

  “From the first chapter until the last graf, I was intrigued by the plot, engaged by the characters, and surprised by (Tarr’s) breadth of knowledge. In fact, when I finished ‘Whorl’ I complained to Tarr about his leaving me wanting more. Get your own. You can’t borrow mine.”

  —The Outdoor Wire

  “Engaging….well paced…impossible to put down.”

  —American Rifleman

  “This book is filled with memorable characters—including the city of Detroit, which serves as more than a backdrop and takes on a character of its own. Whorl is gritty, action packed….and once the story starts to unfold, you’ll find yourself engrossed in a web of treachery and intrigue. Whorl is definitely one of those books that is hard to put down.”

  —Gun World

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  DOGSOLDIERS

  First publication: March 2020

  Copyright 2020 by James Tarr

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without

  permission

  Cover design by Damonza

  ISBN: 979-8616570864

  Printed in the United States of America

  DOGSOLDIERS

  By James Tarr

  PART I

  RATS

  A friend of mine who is a political activist said something interesting the other day, and that was for most people on the left political violence is a knob, and they can turn the heat up and down, with things like protests, and riots, all the way up to destruction of property, and sometimes murder… But for the vast majority of folks on the right, it’s an off and on switch. And the settings are Vote or Shoot Fucking Everybody. And believe me, you really don’t want that switch to get flipped, because Civil War 2.0 would make Bosnia look like a trip to Disneyworld.

  …God willing, America never gets to that point, because if we ever go to war with ourselves again, then it will be a blood bath the like of which the world has never seen. We have foolishly created a central government so incomprehensibly powerful, that to stop it from committing genocide would require millions of capable citizens to rise up and fight.

  —Larry Correia

  The guys who won World War II weren’t soldiers either, until they were.

  —Kurt Schlichter

  CHAPTER ONE

  He sank into the chair with a sigh, closed his eyes for a few seconds. Even with the window the room was dim, almost cave-like, and pleasantly cool. It wouldn’t take much at all for him to drop off to sleep right there in the chair.

  With a little shake of his head he roused himself and bent down to massage his aching calves which were already tightening up. Like he needed another reminder he wasn’t eighteen anymore. Or even twenty-eight. Youth is wasted on the young.

  Through the window all he could see was an expanse of the neighboring roof, almost close enough to touch. Angling up to the left, covered in curling brown shingles long overdue to be replaced. The roof lit up suddenly as the setting sun ducked underneath one of the few clouds in the sky. The long shadow of something, perhaps an old TV antenna, ran across the slope out of sight.

  A brilliant red flash made him jerk. The cardinal perched on the edge of the roof, atop an especially bad shingle curled up in fine imitation of a potato chip. The small bird was so radiantly, unnaturally red it looked like a prop, a fake, a special effect. It twittered, looked left, right, up, down, then peered past the peeling white window frame into the gloom where he sat motionless.

  He held his breath, willed his body to stone, and tried not to blink as the fiery red bird stared into the room. Its tiny beak gleamed in the dying light. Without a sound the bird shot away in a flash of flapping red. A wry smile curled his lips—he’d never been much good at hiding and waiting.

  He scooted the old wooden chair forward with a chorus of protesting creaks. The desk was ancient, with only three small drawers, but all he needed was a flat surface.

  From his breast pocket he pulled out a dented and scuffed black metal case. Out slid a very dated mini-tablet and its loose battery. He inserted the battery, laid the tablet on the desk, then turned it on. It was the size of a cell phone, but only had Bluetooth and wi-fi connectivity, both of which were very short range—fifty, maybe one hundred feet. He retrieved the Cerulean SatLink6 from a cargo pocket on his thigh, carefully stored inside a plastic sandwich bag, inserted the battery, and turned it on as well. He raised the stubby antenna on the SatLink and waited while the two devices powered up. The tablet gave a tiny beep and the small screen lit up slowly, showing a little discoloration here and there where it had suffered past abuses. He checked the battery display first. He wondered how much longer the battery would hold out. It still took a charge, but who knew how old the thing was, how many times it’d been recharged before it had come into his possession. They had a habit of dying without warning.

  The battery in the SatLink6 was newer and seemed to be doing just fine. Unlike the tablet it was built to military specs. He watched the icon spin as the small device searched for a satellite uplink. As it was not connecting to anything locally, just a satellite up in orbit, and a commercial one at that, theoretically it was nearly impossible to track or hack. However, the “theoretically” and “nearly” caveats were always on his mind whenever he powered up his only connection to the outside world. Still, it was much better than working off cell phones. He doubted there was a cell tower within fifty miles that wasn’t being piggybacked by the military. Not that there were many cell towers left in the city, period, except the ones running up the middle of the Blue Zone.

  The readout in the corner said he had excellent signal strength, which was why he’d climbed up to this second floor room on protesting legs. Getting any signal at all these days was a major accomplishment. He didn’t know if the problem was the satellites or his aging device. Maybe there was some sort of jamming technology being employed.

  He connected the tablet to the SatLink via wi-fi and opened the internet browser. From the first breast pocket he withdrew a palm-sized spiral notebook and a worn pencil. He tore a blank page from it—all the pages were blank—and returned the notebook to the pocket. The sun had left the next-door roof, but there was still enough light for him to write. Beyond the aged shingles the evening sky was navy blue, and with only a handful of clouds to hold it in, the heat of the day was already fading. A perfect summer night.

  He checked his watch, then used his thumbs on the small illuminated screen to type in the website address. It was an online forum, based in Canada, but its users came from all over the globe. The users posted about cartoons, comic books, and CGI animated movies. From their posts the users seemed mostly to be young, or at least young at heart, and free from worries like starvation or war.

  He navigated his way into the “Cla
ssic Cartoons” section and started working his way backward through the threads. Twenty-seven threads in he spotted the one he was looking for, entitled “Theodore is my favorite Chipmunk, Change My Mind, Vol. 23”. There were a total of seven posts including the original one. The thread had been created…he checked the time and date stamp. August seventh, two days previous. He checked that he could see all of the posts in the thread on the first virtual page then cut the uplink, folded down the antenna of the SatLink6 and pulled its battery.

  The initial post was short. “My favorit chipmink is Theodore. I like him. Alvin is a jerk.” And there was the same picture of Alvin and The Chipmunks. Most of the responses came shortly thereafter and accused the original poster of being a stupid kid and wasting forum space with his dumb thread yet again. Five posts down was the picture he’d been looking for, a jpeg. After he put away the satellite connector he tapped the jpeg link on the tablet with his finger, and it expanded.

  The jpeg was a photo of a small toy car, the car slightly out of focus like a kid had snapped the pic…but in the background, leaning against the wall at floor level, was a small whiteboard, seemingly forgotten, covered in what at first appeared to be nonsense. If he expanded the photo the ten lines of handwritten code were visible, out of focus but legible. Each line contained mostly one- and two-digit numbers, with the odd word added in. At first glance it looked like gibberish, background visual noise in a waste of time thread on a little-known forum frequented by kids and nerds.

  The small phone-sized tablet had a small 16 GB onboard memory. Half of that was taken up by various games, none of which he had ever played (battery life was too important). The rest of the tablet’s memory was taken up by thousands of downloaded books. At first he’d been shocked at how many there were, shocked at how little memory was required for the digital version of words on a page. Usually an entire book used fewer megabytes than a photo.

  He took a deep breath, flipped through the fiction options until he found the selection he wanted, grabbed his pencil, and went to work. It was never a quick process.

  UNCLE CHARLIE ARRANGING BIG FAMILY REUNION 8 23 BRING KIDS AND ALL THEIR TOYS LET ME KNOW IF CAN MAKE IT COME QUIETLY BREAK AARDVARK BREAK BUCKAROO BREAK 49 31 BREAK 90 14 45

  He deleted the browser history off the tablet for what little good that did, then randomly went through his library of novels and clicked on several at random, paging through them briefly, just in case somewhere in its deep core the tablet kept a record of which books had been accessed. Then he pulled the battery while he thought. And to keep anyone with the technology from turning on the speaker remotely and listening in. Or triangulating the position of the device, even though it shouldn’t be detectable to anyone further away than fifty feet. It wasn’t paranoia when they really were after you.

  That was why they were using so many layers, some high-tech, some analog. A photo, which was harder to scan electronically or with AI than text. Handwritten text in the photo, which was much more difficult to scan with a program. The coded message hidden in the background of a photo of something else, in a thread about an old cartoon series. Then there was the message itself—the numbers denoted pages, lines, and words of a book, and unless you knew which book, the code could never be broken. Uncle Charlie had the same library available to him, and never used the same book twice—the first part of the message was always two words. The first indicated which book, and the second indicated the font size, as changing the font size altered the number of pages of the digital book.

  He didn’t know anything about espionage or what he’d learned was called “signals intelligence”. The whole system seemed a grossly overcomplicated pain in the ass and, perhaps, stupid. But, he had to admit, it had been in place for years without being compromised, as far as he knew, so there was that….

  It was the strangest message, by far, that he’d ever received from Uncle Charlie. He looked down at what he’d written on the paper, then picked up the pencil again and began figuring, because, as usual, there was a code within the code. The month was August, so subtract eight from 23 to get 15. August 15th.

  The message had been left on the seventh. Subtract seven from 49 and 90, eight from 31 and 14, and nine from 45. Then he did the conversions from minutes and seconds into decimals. He wrote the new numbers down and dug into his vest for the map.

  It was laminated, but even so it had seen so much use it was nearly falling apart at the folds. He laid it flat on the desk and peered at it in the dim light. He had no proper tools, and used the side of the tablet as a straight-edge. He studied the point where his two drawn lines intersected, and was surprised to find his heart beating fast. He couldn’t attribute it to the location indicated on the map, there really wasn’t anything there, but there’d been something about the message… “BIG FAMILY REUNION” could only mean one thing.

  He licked his thumb and rubbed out the pencil lines, folded the map up and stuffed it away, then reinserted the batteries and turned both devices back on. As he waited he crumpled the paper into a tiny ball in his palm and stared at it. After a few seconds he looked back to his small tablet and logged back in to the forum and went to the Chipmunks thread. He made a new anonymous post, something the forum allowed, and wrote, “Theodore approves this thread. He and his band of chipmunks are now heading out to a family reunion.” He yawned, the fatigue creeping into him. Even the little surge of adrenaline he’d gotten decrypting Charlie’s message wasn’t enough to mask how bone-tired he was. When was the last time he’d gotten a full night’s sleep? Not since late winter, at least. Fear, apparently, interrupted REM sleep.

  He disconnected and quickly pulled the battery from the SatLink and used the military-grade software program downloaded onto the tablet to wipe the history. He had no idea if it completely removed all traces of his activity, but he had to hope. Every time he inserted the batteries and powered the things up he imagined the thump of rotor blades, the shriek of turbo-diesel engines, the thud of boots coming his way. Or maybe just the brief incoming roar of a missile, even though he knew a missile would impact before he heard the roar as they traveled faster than sound. The batteries went back into their clear plastic sandwich bag and into his right breast pocket. The tablet he slid it into its battered case, which went into his left breast pocket. The SatLink6 went back into the pocket on his thigh.

  He looked around to make sure he hadn’t left anything, and saw the ball of paper still in his palm. Shaking his head he popped it into his mouth and started chewing, then stood up, knees protesting. The change in altitude was all it took for his nose to fill up with the delicious aroma that had been creeping through the house. His empty stomach flopped and gurgled loudly, and his mouth began watering.

  He moved to the window and peered out at the night sky, changing from dark blue to coal black. Here and there stars twinkled brightly above the rooftops, but the waxing moon was still thin and low in the sky and provided no real illumination; what few houses he could see were hulking shadows. Other than the tiny orange twinkling of a small fire in the distance there was not a light to be seen other than the stars and moon. No sign of the cardinal; undoubtedly he’d found a safe perch for the night. A faint breeze stirred, touching his face, and for the first time he noticed there was no glass in the window frame.

  With a grunt he reached down and grabbed his rifle from where he’d leaned it in the corner and headed downstairs.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It hadn’t been a spur of the moment decision; before he’d finally left home, Jason had thought about going for at least a year, and planned how he’d do it for months before finally working up the courage. He’d found several paper maps and studied them at night when he was supposed to be sleeping, planning various routes down into the city. He knew not to do any online searches, using what little internet access they had; everyone knew internet searches were being monitored. You had to be careful about everything you said and did these days, because you never knew who was listening or watching
. Besides, he doubted any maps of the city were accurate. At least those he could access.

  It took him a week to carefully travel the hundred miles to the suburbs ringing the city. Once he was there, it had taken Jason another week, slowly working his way south, before he’d been steered to the old woman’s cramped little house. A week of sleeping in abandoned houses and stores, among the rats and the roaches. During the day he roasted in the heat, the sun turning the broken streets into ovens, the air so humid it felt like he was breathing soup. At night it was worse—the heat was mostly just a bad memory, but the tension was unbearable. Every sound had him on edge, sitting up, peeking out the shattered doorway of whatever ruined house he was in. Even though he knew it was ridiculous he couldn’t stop thinking about the rumors he’d heard about cannibals roaming the city. He was scared, and angry with himself for being scared.

  No one he talked to was any help; it seemed the people he was looking for didn’t want to be tracked down easily. He should have guessed that; apparently he hadn’t thought things out as fully as he’d hoped. It seemed insanity to be alone on foot, wandering the streets, and more than one person told him as much, but it was all he could think to do. The people he was pursuing were ghosts. Often he was chased off just for asking about them.

  And the people he met… his clothes were nothing special, years old, some belonging to his father, the backpack an old hunting pack, and yet compared to the ripped and stained rags most people here wore he seemed formally dressed. A few of the tougher-looking customers eyed his clothes and gear and his young face, but the rifle gave them pause, as did the familiar way he carried it. The only people who walked around openly with weapons were just looking for trouble. If the military caught you it was automatic jail time, or at least that’s what he’d thought was the law, but everyone he met who saw the rifle—and was willing to talk to him—told him that if he ran into a patrol the soldiers would just shoot him on sight if they saw a gun, even though it was just an old lever action. He wasn’t sure if they were messing with him or not. He didn’t care. He was done waiting. It felt like he’d been waiting his whole life.