“Don’t leave them, don’t leave them.” There was the salty taste of blood in his mouth as he yelled when hands grabbed his torn and battered body and dragged him away.
He didn’t know who it was that pulled him out of there. But his military days were over, and Aiisha, and everyone else he knew, were gone forever.
CHAPTER 02
Eldon, Oakland County, Missouri – Today
Michael ‘Mitch’ Taylor pulled to the side of the road and checked his map. Somewhere around here was his turnoff, but he found country roads were like his mother’s pet parakeets—they were beautiful, but they all looked the same to him. For all Mitch knew, he had been going in circles for hours.
He wound down the window and inhaled the smell of drying grass and wild flowers, and listened to the zumm of cicadas and crickets. He smiled. A new start, he thought.
He was still only 35 years old but felt like he had already lived two lifetimes—the first was a military life. There, he’d seen more blood and horror to last forever.
He fucked up, made a bad call, and when he had finally woken up in a hospital all those years ago with his face covered in bandages and his body feeling like it was beaten to a pulp, he felt lucky. He would heal, but Aiisha and most everyone else there that day had either ceased to exist in one loud and pulverizing flash or lay there broken and dying as he was extracted.
He knew they must have all been obliterated, but deep in his soul were the scars of guilt because he might just have left them behind.
Mitch was honorably discharged and then embarked on his next life, the civilian one. He had gone back to college to finish his medical degree and there he met Cindy, and suddenly his life became full of color, light, laughter, and love again.
In eight months, they were married and living in a big city; he working as a general medical practitioner, and she in a downtown law firm. Their lives were stable, quiet, and looking like it’d make for a pretty damn good future for them. They even talked about kids—one each, a boy and a girl.
But shit luck seemed to follow him like a dark cloud. Because then Cindy got the lump. He had told her not to worry as she went in for further tests. But secretly he had been scared to death, and when she got the results back, she handed him all the lab reports and looked up at him with glistening eyes that held a plea that his medical knowledge would somehow translate the horrible truth on the pages into something it wasn’t.
Instead, one glimpse at the dense mass-network in the images and the accompanying medical notes and he had felt his world begin to crumble under his feet—it was stage 4 breast cancer, metastasized, and inoperable, and that little lump had probably been working its way backward into and right throughout her body for years.
He cried. She grew worse and the treatments just made her last months on Earth unbearable. He cried longer and harder when she finally left him. Left him. He scoffed softly at the expression, as he still couldn’t bear to say: she died.
Even now, years later, sitting in that car by himself, he felt his vision swim once more with tears. Everyone I love dies, he thought morosely.
He had wanted to kill himself, had nightmares, drank hard and hit rock bottom, and as he still had his Glock 19, many times he’d pulled it out and just held it as he stared off into the distance, seeing nothing but an endless blankness.
His shrink had recommended a new start as depression was winning the tug-of-war for his mind. And that was where life number three came in—Eldon.
Over breakfast one day, he saw the ad: a small town in Oakland County named Eldon was looking for a family practice doctor. He applied and after several online interviews, more grueling than he expected, and then a FaceTime chat over the internet where he met Keith Melnick, the mayor; Karen Powell, vice mayor, who was young but sharp as a razor; Ralph Gillespie, the town attorney and oversized loudmouth; plus several of the other council members, he had gotten the job.
And now here he was on his way.
Or soon would be. Mitch took a hand from the wheel and wiped his eyes with his forearm.
“A new start.” He nodded. “Yep.”
He cleared his throat and then pulled out onto the road to set off again.
*****
The ancient Native American lowered his hands as his chant died away. He stood stone-still for several moments and seemed to be listening for something. After a while, he grunted softly and began to pack away his charms, small drum and beater, and herbs into a large cloth bag.
He straightened; his task was done, and the drawing spell was working as he sensed the warrior approaching. He then walked slowly down the dry, scrabbly path from the mine mouth and arrived at the road, looking toward the east.
He had a long way to go before he was home. But he knew that what was coming, would mean he’d soon be back.
CHAPTER 03
In another fifteen minutes of sunny, tree-lined roads, and fields of long grass dotted with stands of silver maple, ash, and oak trees, he saw the sign—Eldon, Oakland County, population: 1024—and a turnoff.
Then in another few minutes more, he started to see houses, then more houses, and then he entered Eldon town central. He smiled as he slowed down, delighted it looked exactly like its pictures.
He felt as if he just traveled back to a time and place where people smiled and waved at each other, the streets were wide, and the sun shone on every corner of the world.
He noticed someone behind a window watching him, and gave a small wave, but the curtains were quickly tugged closed. Well, maybe
