Dominion: Chapter 4 – The Power to Rule_(1)

The Power to Rule

Winter was upon the country, flooding the landscape with a deathly chill. Yet it wasn’t the cold that sent shivers down everyone’s spine. It was fear. Following the gray breeze, rumors were flowing from the north, rumors of death and destruction. Entire towns were either being razed with no survivors, or left hollow, with food still sitting on the tables, like everyone had been raptured away. There were stories of a monster in the woods in the north, about how a town called Senner met its wrath, but there was no evidence to back that up, as it looked like the whole area had been struck by a meteor. Even the forests had gone silent, the people of the wilderness vanishing out of thin air.

To the citizens of New England, nightfall invoked a unique fear, both new in experience, yet primordial and instinctive. When the sun disappeared below the horizon, it was like God had closed his eyes, and left humanity to fend for itself against whatever evil dwelled in the dark.

=============

A line of military trucks and vans rolled down the empty highway, their destination being the town of Dexter, the most recent scene of this mysterious nightmare. The media paid little attention to the northern states, seeing them as a lost frontier that the government barely had a hold over. Anything north of Boston was considered the badlands. However, the stories of towns being “attacked” were turning heads, especially since the phenomenon seemed to be heading south.

Now, the government was getting involved, searching for answers in the deathly silence. The convoy consisted of the FBI, searching for human causes, the CDC, looking for viral causes, and the National Paranormal Examination Branch, on the lookout for causes relating to the war. Keeping them all safe was a contingent of the National Guard, with turret-mounted machine guns ready to shoot anything, be it alive or undead. Similar convoys were heading out to the other affected towns, one on its way to Senner.

Driving behind a National Guard personnel carrier were the two leading agents of the NPEB. The older of the two, Agent Bosman, was driving while incessantly scratching dandruff out of his beard. His partner was named Locke, and he was examining reports from other scenes.

“You’ll get sick if you keep reading those stories,” said Bosman.

“I have a strong stomach. A few ghost stories won’t scare me.”

“I meant because you’re reading on the road. I don’t want to hear you moaning the rest of the day because you got carsick.”

“It’s one of those rumors from Senner. Supposedly, not only did a young man transform into some kind of horrific monster, but he turned two other citizens into zombies.”

“Nonsense. If the pandemic had returned, we’d be seeing a lot more undead.”

“Not necessarily. We’re deep in the state. Entire armies could be hiding in those trees.”

“But they don’t know how to hide. Even if by some twist of fate, zombies did return, then why would they be any different from before? Even if they were able to clear out these towns, there would always be a dozen or so stragglers and a huge mess left behind. They’re just mindless drones.”

“If it happened once, it can happen again, but that doesn’t mean it’ll happen the same way. Maybe the virus mutated, made them smarter or something. Apparently, a hunting party was even sent into the woods, and they encountered something… demonic. Jesus.”

Before Bosman could retort, a voice crackled on their radio. “This is Sergeant Barns. We’ve reached Dexter. You… might want to look up.”

The convoy slowed, with the drivers and passengers of every vehicle looking towards the sky. There was a highway sign above the road, labeling the offramp leading to Dexter. Hanging from the sign were three bodies, all with their intestines dangling freely, two men and a woman.

“Zombies sure as fuck don’t do that.”

They went down the offramp, now seeing cars for the first time as they entered the perimeter of the city. All the cars had been driven off the road with their tires slashed and their exteriors looking like they had been hacked at with chainsaws. Their inhabitants were visible only as silhouettes, as all the windows had been splattered with blood. In the town, it was just as everyone expected. Bodies littered the streets, either cast aside like garbage or put on some kind of horrific display with varying forms of desecration and mutilation.

In the center of town, field agents unloaded their equipment to begin surveying the damage. They all split up, each group guarded by the National Guard. As per CDC warning, everyone wore masks, goggles, and rubber gloves, so as to avoid possible contamination. Beyond their work, the town was as silent as a graveyard. The only difference, was that here, the bodies had yet to be buried. They all bore the same injuries, vicious claw and teeth marks, like they had been mauled by wild animals, nothing smaller than a bear at the least. Despite the vast splotches of blood painting the city, each body was bone dry.

The departments moved interchangeably through the different areas, making sure they all saw everything. Eventually, Locke crossed paths with the head investigator of the FBI, Special Agent Dunham. She was a cute brunette, but she was missing her gloves, and with a coffee-cup in her hand, her calloused knuckles were on display, a testament to her love-hate relationship with the punching bag at her local gym.

“Any theories?” she asked as he approached.

“If this was the work of zombies, then it would have to be a mutated strain of the disease, causing physical and mental enhancements.”

She was leaning against a power line pole, but Locke took her arm and gently pulled her away. Her first instinct told her to wrench her arm free and open up some distance, but the way he was looking up, she just took the hint and stepped away. She followed his gaze, spotting a body impaled on the pole. Jesus, how did she miss that?

“Please tell me you have a counter theory,” he said.

She shook her head. “It wasn’t marauders. Look at the roads, no tire marks. If it was a roving gang, they would had burst into town with their tires screeching and squealing. There are plenty of bullet casings, likely from the armed civilians, but no sign that anyone was shooting at them, not a single bullet wound. There is also almost no destruction, nothing missing. But what really concerns me is that whatever did it left no bodies behind. If this was done by the undead or some other non-human creatures, then someone should have managed to kill at least one.”

“Meaning they either took the bodies when they left, or the people were simply unable to kill any.”

“Hey! Over here!” Locke looked over to Bosman, waving from an alley. He and Dunham rushed over. It was another body. “Look at this.”

He was pointing down at a patch of snow, in which a footprint had been left behind, but not the footprint of a human. It had four toes, each with long talons, along with a fifth toe behind the ball of the foot. The print was massive, as if belonging to a raptor from Jurassic Park.

Dunham crouched down to get a closer look. “This print… It’s like something from a predatory bird, or some kind of quadrupedal animal.”

Bosman motioned to the body. “But look at the bite wound here on the neck of the vic. Humanoid bite pattern, but with much sharper teeth, and…” he held up a measuring tape to study the width, “a mandible almost one and a half times bigger than a regular human.”

Locke stepped back, looking at the scene to try and imagine the creature in its entirety. He moved his hands in the air to segment the feet, the imaginary legs, the torso, and the head. “A person with a mouth that big would have to be… a good seven, eight feet tall?”

“If we’re talking gigantism, then yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Add in the altered structure of the legs and we’re talking ten to twelve feet.”

Both Bosman and Dunham looked up, trying to visualize a creature that size.

“God, help us,” Dunham murmured.

=============

Augusta, the capital of Maine, sat on the bank of the Kennebec River. While not as large as the city of Portland, and too far inland to handle maritime commerce, it was positioned perfectly to control the belt of civilization that stretched along the coast from Bangor to the New Hampshire border. To enforce its authority, the city had been heavily renovated during the reconstruction movement, with massive buildings and a concrete jungle replacing what had originally been a rural town before the war. Normally bustling, it was quiet on this night, the overcast blocking out the moon and stars and robbing what little courage anyone had to be out after sundown. Even artificial light seemed weakened, hindered by a fog that rolled in off the river and entombed everything.

Not all was silent. There were hurried steps, a scrawny teenager running down the sidewalk, fleeing from a pursuer that wasn’t there. The only thing chasing him was his own anxiety. He kept by the light as much as he could, only sighing in relief when he finally reached the Moose Head Tavern. He circled around and entered through the backdoor. His apron was waiting for him on a hook by the light switch. As he walked past the kitchen, the bartender, a large man with a head like a fuzzy potato, stepped out with two baskets of fries.

“Eric? You’re certainly here early. Your shift doesn’t start for another hour.”

The boy was flushed and gasping for air, but he tried to play it off. “Yeah, well, the bus was delayed, so I decided to walk.”

“I’ve seen you walk here in the rain without being this early. Look at yourself, you look like you’re about to keel over. What’s going on with you?”

“I just… didn’t want to be on the streets any longer than I had to.”

The bartender rolled his eyes and walked back out with Eric following him. “Those are just stories. Don’t let some rumors by a bunch of hillbillies scare you shitless.”

“Haven’t you been watching the news? It’s been happening in more and more towns.”

“It’s probably just a prank or something, someone trying to stir things up. Here, take these to the girls.”

Eric took the two baskets and maneuvered out from behind the counter. The bar was lively as always, but filled only with men, save for two exceptions. In the back of the bar were two college girls that Eric knew well, Cho and Hijiri Misato, nineteen-year-old twins from Japan. Despite their relationship, their personalities were polar opposites. Hijiri, the younger sister, sat with her back to the wall. She kept her scarf on, even inside, and wore a long skirt over her black leggings. Her eyes were always downcast, afraid to meet anyone’s gaze. Despite her shyness, she was a world-class beauty, and her glasses gave her a sexy librarian look.

Cho, on the other hand, was using a second chair as a footrest to announce her presence to everyone in the bar. She wore sexy yoga pants and a tube top that showed off her midriff. Her coat was the same way, making sure her belly button ring was always visible. Similarly visible were her nipple piercings, poking through her top. Despite being D-cup, she rarely wore a bra. She truly rocked the slutty hotness department, though her personality left a lot to be desired. She was noisy, impatient, shameless, and all-around bossy. When looking at her flat-chested sister, one might think breast size equaled confidence.

“Christ, it’s about fucking time. Now go get us some shots,” Cho barked.

Hijiri slightly raised her head, but didn’t say anything. Eric knew that slight movement was her way of trying to tell her sister to be polite and that she didn’t want any heavy alcohol, but was too nervous to actually say it. Cho was a bitch, but she looked after Hijiri, and after all these years, Hijiri knew there was no point in trying to change her behavior.

“Hi, Eric,” she said softly, but with a small smile.

“Hey,” he replied in kind, finally having something to feel good about.

No warning, Cho just slapped him in the balls with the back of her hand, strong enough to nearly send him to the floor. “Know your place, virgin,” she said, not even looking at him.

“I’ll… I’ll get you your drink,” he said as he tried to maintain his balance. He hobbled towards the counter, but heard Hijiri’s voice.

“Our ride is here.”

He and Cho both looked out the front window, where a fancy town car sat, waiting.

“So? We’ll leave when we’re done. That driver is paid to wait.”

“Dad will be mad if we’re late.”

“Ugh, fine.”

The two of them gathered their things and left. No money was left on the table, and the bartender didn’t write down any numbers for a tab. Two underage girls eating and drinking at a bar for free, one of them always nervous and the other used to getting her own way. A town car waiting for them outside. An underage boy working behind the scenes, with all the patrons being men who were armed. All these traits had a common factor, the twins’ father: Lee Misato, “the Capone of the North”.

As his nickname suggested, he ran the state mafia, and by extension, the state itself, with his influence stretching to every town near the coast, from Bangor to Portland, as well as multiple city-states in the rural areas, and he was currently engaged in a war with the Boston mafia to expand his territory into other states. Rumor had it that he used to be a Yakuza, but fled to the states almost fifteen years ago with his daughters after a failed coup. His second coup was successful. This bar was one of the many businesses he owned, with the majority of its patrons being his underlings. So, of course, his daughters got free service. With most of the police on his payroll, Cho and Hijiri could do just about anything without consequences.

Their personalities had been shaped by this lifestyle. Hijiri felt an unspoken shame towards her father’s crimes, but it was in conflict with her gratitude for the happy and stable life, and her love for the only living member of her family, besides her sister. With illegal activities happening all around her, she had long since learned to keep her head down. She didn’t see or hear anything. As far as anyone was concerned, she didn’t exist, and if she didn’t exist, she could never get in trouble.

Cho, on the other hand, loved being the daughter of a mob boss. Since he came to power, she lived her life surrounded by money and yes-men. She got whatever she wanted, and Daddy would hear about anyone who got in the way of that. It was why she flaunted her looks, because no one dared touch her. Every man was afraid of her, so she’d tease them to add salt to the wound. To her, sex was just a means of dominating and humiliating any guy she deemed worthy enough for her to use. In a few years, she might even let Eric be her new whipping boy.

Eric himself was the son of one of Lee’s former underlings, killed during a botched drug deal. His mom was out of the picture, so Lee took care of Eric, keeping him out of the foster system and giving him a job at the bar with added monetary aid so that he could live on his own while going to school. He even pulled some strings to get him a scholarship for after he graduated. Like the twins, no one would bat an eye to his presence in this bar.

Eric’s shift dragged on, time and focus sweeping all thoughts and fears out of his head. As he worked, Misato’s men would ask him how he was doing, ask about school, if he was dating anyone. They were all friends of his father and kept an eye on him. They were good guys. The Moose Head was more like a close-knit club than a bar.

But someone didn’t know the rules.

It was towards the end of Eric’s shift when a stranger entered. Black overcoat, black hair, and a glint in his eye that anyone in the bar could recognize. He took a seat at the counter, seemingly oblivious to the eyes on him. There were only two reasons why a stranger would enter this bar. Either he didn’t know the kind of place it was, or he knew exactly the kind of place it was. All the men exchanged glances, trying to figure out if anyone knew him. If he was a stranger to all but one of them, that would make some sense. Was he invited?

“Whiskey, neat,” he said.

The bartender poured him his drink. “I haven’t seen you around here before.”

“I just rolled into town.”

“From the south?”

“From the north.”

Brows furrowed, red flags being raised.