Matt Hlinak - DoG

“The jungle was totally quiet. I’d been in country for four years, and the jungle was always full of noise from insects, birds, monkeys, and all the other wildlife. When I climbed out of my plane, there was absolute silence.

“My compass didn’t work, so I just picked a direction at random and started walking. The jungle was dense, and I didn’t have a machete, so I humped it pretty slowly.

There were no bugs, which was really odd for the thick of the Cambodian jungle. After about an hour, I came upon an old temple in a clearing, right in the middle of nowhere.

“The temple was centuries old. It was built from cut stones that were now covered with moss and vines, but at one time it must have looked like the ziggurats in Sumeria.

The bottom half was like a pyramid with a big staircase carved into one side that led up to the top half, which looked like a Greek temple, with columns all around. This was a holy place, or the opposite, and I could feel power coming from it. Even though it was over a hundred degrees out, I was shivering.

“I had no idea where I was. I thought that maybe if I climbed to the top of this thing, I could get a better view of my surroundings. As I approached, these two dhole —which is some kind of gook fox—ran out from around the side of the temple and started growling at me. I shot one of them, which should have scared off the other one, but it held its ground, still growling at me, so I shot it too. Then I climbed the stairs to the top, about forty feet or so above the ground.

“The temple was full of bones. They were human bones organized into a couple hundred lines. There was one line of skulls, one line of femurs, one line of knucklebones.

Someone had taken the time to sort through a dozen or so bodies. And then I saw one intact skeleton set against the wall. As I moved closer, I realized that it wasn’t a skeleton, it was a man, and he was still alive.

“He was an old man, ancient, and he was completely bald and completely naked.

He was so skinny he looked like bones wrapped in old leather. He grinned at me when I approached and he didn’t have any teeth. He was sitting Indian-style with his hands folded in front of him like he was praying. I assumed he was some kind of hermit monk who’d gone crazy out here all by himself, which is probably the truth.

“It was sitting on the ground in front of him, and I realized he was praying to it. I walked closer to him, stepping one foot over the other on the narrow path between lines of bones, which I didn’t want to touch—bad voodoo.

“I asked him in Khmer where we were. He didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, ‘The Dog-God is here, and here he must remain.’ He seemed crazy as hell to me. I took a few more steps and asked him again where we were. Again he said, ‘The Dog-God is here, and here he must remain.’ I was close enough to get my first good look at it. I realized right away that this was what had caused that weird feeling when I first came up to the temple.

“I asked him what it was. He just shook his head. I bent down and looked at it close up and felt a surge of electricity run through my body. I tumbled back onto a line of bones. The old monk laughed his crazy laugh and said, ‘The Dog-God is here, and here he must remain.’ I hopped back to my feet and reached down to pick it up, and the old man’s arm shot out and grabbed my wrist. His fingers were long and skinny, and his nails were uncut. He had a hand like a vulture’s claw. He was so thin he couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, but his grip was so strong I couldn’t pull away. I tugged and tugged, but he wouldn’t let go, and I couldn’t break free. Finally, I shot him, and that did the trick.

“I scooped it up and put it in my backpack. Suddenly I knew exactly where I needed to go. It was guiding me. I climbed down off the temple and headed out into the jungle. It took a day-and-a-half of rough going before I stumbled on a FANK base that had a few American spooks there who helicoptered me back to friendly territory.

“At this point, it was still a secret that we were in Cambodia, which I guess they were hoping would stay a secret if they went easy on those of us who’d gotten banged up over there. They told me I could go home if I wanted, and I said, ‘Yes,’ without really thinking about it.

“A day later, I was flying in a troop transport over the Pacific Ocean, headed for Eielson Air Force Base, near Fairbanks. We ran into some bad weather. The engines conked out, and we went down. There were twenty-five other men on board, and they all died. Those who survived the crash just started dying all at once. One kid was talking to me and he died in the middle of a sentence. He just slid into the water and never came back up. But it kept me alive. The only problem was that I had to let go of it to stay afloat in that icy water. I floated there for three days.

“Finally a fishing trawler found me. The crew couldn’t believe I’d survived. I made the navigator give me the exact coordinates of where we were so I could go back for it some day. I spent the next thirty years combing the seabed in this area. I could sense it, just like I can now, but the ocean is a mighty big place. I’m telling you this story because I don’t have the patience to search for it again.”

“Okay,” Culann said. “So this thing is a god? How does it work? How come I’m still alive?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you plan to do with it?”

The Captain glared at Culann.

“I’m just wondering,” Culann continued, “what it can do. I’m curious how you control it.”

The Captain scratched his cheek for a moment before answering, “I don’t know. I just know that I was able to find it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s only a matter of time before I figure it out.”

As Culann listened to this, he was of course aware that the Captain did not want the orb so that he could bring about world peace. The Captain’s naked lust for power, power he didn’t even understand, was frightening for Culann to witness up close. Culann realized that he had to stop the Captain, even if it meant sacrificing his own life, which wasn’t much of a sacrifice since Culann was pretty sure the Captain was going to kill him anyway. At the very least, Culann needed to keep from revealing the orb’s location, although he doubted he could hold out for very long once the Captain started torturing him.

He still had Williams’s gun, which was still covered by his t-shirt. Even after Culann had been shot, he hadn’t dared draw his own weapon. He had very little confidence in his ability to hit the Captain before getting riddled with bullets. But as long as the Captain killed him, then Culann wouldn’t tell where the orb is. He had nothing to lose, so he went for it.

It took one second for Culann to pull his t-shirt aside, draw Williams’s gun from the holster, take hasty aim at the Captain, and pull the trigger. But it was a second that seemed like a lifetime. Culann was conscious of the cold, hard feel of the gun butt, the almost delicate slenderness of the trigger, the spark of electricity when the bullet leapt from the barrel. He was simultaneously conscious of the Captain’s superhuman response.

The older man’s stern face registered no surprise. He calmly raised his own weapon and fired. Culann could even see the tough skin on the Captain’s finger fold as it squeezed the trigger. As Culann catalogued all of these details, his mind also imagined two worlds. In the first, Culann’s bullet found its mark. In this world, the fog swallowed Pyrite, and Culann lived out his days amongst the dogs, forever cut off from the human race, which would never know how close it had come to extinction or that an alcoholic sex offender was the key to its salvation. In the other world, Culann missed. The Captain tortured him until he revealed the orb’s location and then killed him. The Captain unleashed waves of death and destruction on the civilized world until it granted him absolute power. He withered like the Cambodian monk over the course of many lifetimes, all the while exercising dominion over the Earth from a throne of madness. This was what was at stake.