Treaters: Book One of the Divine Conflict. Read online

  Treaters

  CJ Rutherford

  Copyright (c) 2017 by CJ Rutherford

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are purely the result of the author’s imagination.

  Any reference to real life or events happening in this world is intended to enhance the storyline and give it a sense of realism and authenticity.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means-electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording or otherwise-without prior permission in writing from the author, with the exception of a reviewer who may quote brief passages in the review.

  Dedication

  There are several people I have to thank for this book. First of all, there are the people who read the original short story, and enjoyed it enough to demand that I rewrite it as a full-length novel.

  Then there are my beta readers, especially Sherri A. Wingler, who prevented me from committing literary suicide; you know what I mean.

  Then there is my proof reader/formatter, Heather Osborne.

  Finally, there is my editor, Patricia Rose. I cannot begin to thank her enough, and this book is as much her work as it is mine. Over the last few months we have argued, sulked, debated, and usually ended up agreeing on the content. We have sweated blood and tears into the wee small hours to craft what you are about to read, and without Patricia this would be but a shadow of what it is now.

  I hope you enjoy it.

  Prologue

  Jaz

  Fuck! How could I have been so stupid?

  My heart hammered in my chest as I heard the claws and talons sweep the branches and undergrowth away. I held my breath, refusing to breathe the scent of death, the rot seeping over my shelter. I willed the monster – the Treater – to walk on by, to miss my hiding place and let me live to see another dawn. Daybreak was only minutes away.

  Shit, fuck, fuck, shit!

  I saw the tell-tale lightening of the sky through the leaves covering my makeshift hideout, courtesy of a shallow hollow between two fallen tree trunks. My sleeping bag was hidden from view by the tarpaulin draped across them. It, in turn, was covered with dead leaves and other forest undergrowth.

  My lungs burnt, desperate to release the air I held, but over the thundering pulse in my head, I heard the footsteps halt. The Treater was only feet away from me, and it hissed as it tasted the air. The sound was guttural, and the clicks and clacks of its teeth grinding together had me clenching my fists in frustration as much as fear.

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

  I heard scrabbling and mutterings in an alien language that jarred my soul, begging me to run, to attempt a futile escape. The thing 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 scent of my sweat, the aura 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. I knew 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 carefully 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’d put the pieces together over the months. As the asphalt jungles and cities fell, the only protection lay in the earth itself, so every night Jennifer and I selected a spot near a river or stream. We smeared each bag in mud and slept as best we could. The mud disguised whatever aura the Treaters used to find us.

  Months, I thought. That’s all it had taken for the world to go to hell.

  Months ago, I had friends – no, more, they were my family. Now? Jennifer was the first person I’d seen alive since it happened. My family, everyone I knew, was gone, and it all started that day, six or so months ago. I’d lost track of the exact date I found Jennifer, but it was Halloween night when the gates of Hell opened, and the hordes of demons flooded out.

  I thought back, remembering the last – normal – day of my existence.

  Chapter One

  Boys and Their Toys

  Jaz

  “Anything yet?” Ted asked. His downturned face looked perpetually sad. I knew better. I saw the line on his rod jerk.

  “Nope. You?” My own monofilament swam busily from side to side on the port, playing me as much as I played Ted. We both knew we had something. It was tradition to let the excitement play out, just like jigging a line.

  Ted looked at his green-gilled little brother in affectionate disgust. The lake was a mirror with barely a ripple, but Bill sat in the middle of the boat, hugging a puke bucket.

  Johnnie, the oldest of the three brothers, winked at me, before swaying to one side, causing the boat to rock.

  “Would you tell him to stop doing that?” Bill looked up at me, pleadingly.

  I nodded. “Cut it out, man…shit!” My rod bent almost in half. “I got a strike…no, I got her!”

  We’d been coming to the lodge I owned on this lake for ten years, in hopes that one of us might catch her. My father had first told me about her when I was three years old. He called her Nessie, after the legendary Scottish sea monster, but this beast was real…or so he said.

  The lodge we were staying in had been his. I’d inherited it from him, as he’d inherited it from his own father, my Grandpa Willie, but their stories were always the same.

  They were out on the lake one day with their dog in the boat. Buster had started to bark, those irritating, challenging barks that a dog never stops. Next thing, the hugest catfish ever burst out of the water and swallowed Buster whole.

  I have no idea if the tale was true, but I remembered Buster. He was a friendly and mischievous Springer Spaniel. And I remember my grandpa and dad going fishing with him once, and Buster not coming back.

  The boat moved sideways as I anchored my feet against the side. Jeeze, this may not be Nessie, but it was a damn big fish! We’d be eating well tonight.

  Ted cut his line when he felt the boat bow down and anchored himself on the other side to help balance the boat while Johnnie came over to my side with the net. Retching from midships proved our stabilizing efforts weren’t enough to prevent green-gilled Bill from throwing up half a lung.

  ***

  Two hours later, we sat around the firepit.

  “Beer?” It wasn’t a question. Ted thrust a cold one into my hand. The smell of seared fish saturated the air.

  “How’s Bill?” I asked. This was his first fishing trip, and it hadn’t gone well. Not only had he gotten travel sick on the way getting here, he got seasick on the totally placid lake, and couldn’t hold more than two beers at any time without throwing up. I wondered if they were even related, much less brothers.

  “Ah, he’ll be fine.” Ted smirked. “Must be that Ivy League education. Man, you’d think a medical student could stick the smell of roast fish, right? God help him if he ever has to stick his hands in anything really gruesome.”

  I snickered, looking at the half of the huge catfish that barely fit on the oversized griddle we’d fashioned out of the lid to a metal trash can. We could have cooked it on the stove in the lodge, but this was our last night before returni
ng home from our annual fishing trip. This was ritual, and even if it had been raining sleet, we’d still be here, getting drunk around the fire. Thankfully, the early November sky was clear. Fucking cold, though!

  Another few weeks and this whole valley would be white with freshly fallen snow. Winter came early in the North Dakota wilderness. I huddled closer, warming my hands on the fire.

  Johnnie sat down beside me. “It’s okay to think of them, you know that, right?”

  I sighed. I knew the guys had brought me up here to try to distract me, but nothing could take my mind off the fact it’d been two years since Tommy had died and around a year and a half since Sherri had followed. A bitter pit boiled in my stomach.

  “It’ll be okay, buddy.” Johnnie bumped my shoulder. He always could read my mind, and he knew I teetered on the brink of depression. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

  I snorted. “I left a loaded gun in my house.” Guilt rose again, roiling with the beer in my gut.

  My son, Tommy, had been disabled. It was nothing they could put a label on, but Sherri had known almost immediately that he was developmentally delayed. We'd fought for years to get his condition diagnosed appropriately. He saw every military pediatrician in the country, and the closest they could come was “autism.” That wasn't it … or that wasn't just it.

  I was a Staff Sergeant. Under normal circumstances, my military pay would have been more than adequate and the coverage for Tommy's medical was stellar … but it still wasn't enough. The normal military medical channels weren't cutting it – not for the kind of proactive medical care and bills we were looking at for Tommy.

  In desperation, watching my wife and kid eat ramen noodles for the third night this week, I dialed the number. Fourteen digits and a ridiculous bureaucratic runaround before Esse Almenara came on the line. I still occasionally kept in touch with a few people from Graham Windham, but I had never called him before. We both knew why. He and I spoke for almost an hour on the telephone that Thursday evening.

  “Why are we taking Tommy to Bristol?” Sherri had snapped that at me Sunday afternoon as I'd dug found their passports. “There's nothing to do there, Jaz; the Zucchini Festival is months away, and seeing it once was enough! For God's sake, you've packed enough for a week! Jaz – stop. Listen to me. You know I can drive home and get something – why in the world did you pack his bathing suit?”

  I took the small wallet out of her purse, something I normally wouldn't do. Women’s purses were no-man’s land at best, enemy territory at worst. I took the bills I had already separated and put them into her wallet, adding several more bills to the “secret” zippered compartment I wasn’t supposed to know about.

  “Not Bristol, up the road,” I said, grabbing her hand and placing the passports and wallet atop it, clasping her hand firmly closed with my other. “Bristol, England, honey. It's somewhere near Wales, I think. You might even get a chance to sightsee.”

  I saw them off Sunday, assuring her repeatedly that I had heard of the new treatment option through a trusted source and yes, everything was paid for. I spent the rest of the night making myself puke at the thought of what I was going to have to ask my gunny in the morning. I felt sick at the thought of leaving the Corps. Esse had assured me everything would work exactly as he said, and I believed him … but Christ, it felt like I was throwing away fourteen years!

  Gunny Cooper and I were tight, as Marines often get when serving together, and I considered him a friend as well as a comrade. To my surprise, things went hella lot smoother than they had any right to go.

  “I'm sorry to lose you, son,” Gunny said, as he motioned me to take a seat, my well-prepared speech unspoken. “Hell of a good Marine. These are the preliminary separation documents – you need to sign here ... here … and here. Top's already on the look-out for it. In a month, or less, you will be an honorably retired USMC Staff Sergeant.”

  “But …” Retired? That meant … The FUCK? My head spun and gunny leaned in close. “I've never seen documents moved so fast or with so many tails on them. Secretarial Authority with full stripes and severance? Damn, you impressed someone, son. The way I heard it, three members of Senate committees got phone calls in the middle of the night, two of them from Homeland. These boys aren't playing, son – this is happening yesterday.”

  And it did, figuratively, of course. I was on terminal leave in an absolutely-unheard-of three weeks. I still hadn't told Sherri what was happening – every time we skyped, she wouldn't let me get in a word edgewise, telling me how Tommy was actively communicating with her! Progress was irregular, but even a bad day in this place was amazing compared to a great day in the states. He had speech therapists, sign language therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, play therapists … it was incomprehensible to her. Her two-year-old son was saying “juice” and “cookie.” Not saying them, of course, and his legs were being trained how to walk! These specialists had discovered Tommy had some peculiar form of neuromotor dysfunction in addition to autism, and the dual nature of his condition went beyond the limits of all but a handful of the specialists working on this amazing team out of England and Denmark. And they were ALL working on Tommy's behalf! I figured there would be enough time to tell Sherri I'd sold my soul to the devil another day.

  I started working as Esse Almenara's personal security assistant exactly one month to the day I'd put Sherri and Tommy on the plane to not-up-the-road Bristol. They still had several weeks before they would return home, so that gave me a bit of breathing room before the shit would hit the fan. Her brothers knew, of course, and they were as supportive as they were capable of being … which means they didn't beat the shit out of me, but not much else.

  The shit hit the fan, as I expected it would. We had a wonderful, loving reunion at the airport. My son cried when he saw me and hugged me so tight around the neck that I cried back. We were a mess, the three of us. We had an awesome dinner at The Wolfe Den, and, to my surprise, Sherri ordered meatballs for Tommy, which he picked at with gusto. He still wasn't strong on eye contact, but I could definitely see progress with his motor function and I was as happy as Sherri.

  Johnnie's terms had been lenient – if I ever wanted to get laid again. I had to tell Sherri before we made whoop-de-doo, or the brothers would deliver the ass-kicking I deserved.

  When we settled Tommy into bed for the night, I told Sherri. She had heard a few of my stories about Esse, although she'd never met him. She was, justifiably, terrified of him. I had gone over to the “Dark Side,” my wife claimed. She'd shouted herself hoarse when she discovered I had already taken the job, but not even she could deny the amazing progress Tommy had already made. I reminded her Esse had the kind of resources we needed. She had softened, although there had been no welcome-home lovemaking that night. She forgave me the next day, with misgivings.

  Esse and I went back a long way, so dancing for the devil wasn't as miserable as it could have been. Three years later, I’d been in Mexico doing my job when Tommy found the gun I’d left with Sherri, just in case one of my Esse's “competitors” came after my family. It was a safeguard. It was never supposed to happen.

  I crushed the beer can in my hand, so hard the sharp edges bit into my palm. “It was my fault, John. All of it was my fault.” I was tempted to wallow in the past, the booze giving me the justification, but when I tried, all I could remember was the promise I’d made to my wife, while she lay dying on her hospital bed. Tommy's death had made her give up on everything, and, for months afterward, she’d lain in her bed, swallowed by what we all thought was a horrible, black depression. When we found it was more, she even blamed herself for getting sick. Cancer didn’t work like that, though. That was one of the few things I was sure about.

  She’d looked me in the eye, and even though her face was ghost-pale and her eyes almost translucent sockets, she was more beautiful than I could ever remember. ‘No more dwelling, no recriminations,’ she’d said. Again and again, she – we – said it. I
t became a mantra. She made me promise to get on with my life, and…I had. Mostly.

  The anniversaries were the hardest, but I had my friends – my adoptive family – to support me.

  Johnnie held his hand out. I took it. “Man, we got your back; always.” We clinked cans, and I forced a smile. He’d done it again, blown away the cloud of depression with his ready smile and his uncanny ability to say the right thing at exactly the right time. He smirked as he looked at his brothers.

  Ted flipped a fillet of the monster catfish. I doubted it was big enough to eat Buster, but shit, it was big. Bill was still green, but he had put the puke bucket away and watched the cooking process with interest, his glasses hiding a pair of incredibly intelligent eyes. He would make a great doctor, if he could manage to overcome his queasiness.

  I smiled. These guys were my family. I'd always wondered at my luck whenever things slowed down enough to I could think over my life.

  My parents had died in a car crash when I was nine. I had no relatives, and my parents’ money, whatever they’d possessed, had been swallowed up by funeral expenses and debt. I grew up in The Graham Windham Orphanage in New York City. For about nine years, it was all I knew, and it wasn’t so bad. I fostered in and out pretty regularly; most of the foster parents were in it for the money, and their monthly stipend wasn't enough for them to put up with a smart-mouthed, angry, destructive kid. I had a stubborn streak a mile wide, and I knew my legal rights – Miss made sure every foster knew what wasn't permitted. My rights got violated – a number of times – but I always, in one way or another, gave back worse than I got. Sugar in a gas tank is pretty effective when still-hungover foster dad had to get to work early the next day after kicking my ass the night before. Surprisingly, I never quite got adopted, so I graduated out of the system at eighteen and joined the Marine Corps.