Chapter 2

When dusk broke on the sixteenth, he trudged alongside a sweeping field of long, tawny grains. His pace slowed. In the midst of battles, when the only organic elements around him were blood and body parts, it was easy to forget there was another world beyond the ones he’d always known. Plants grew in pots, not the ground. Anything stretching taller than him was made of steel or glass. Breezes carried chemicals and death. Wind didn’t exist to make the slender fronds of identifiable grasses whisper to him in the night air.

He touched one, and when it didn’t feel like much of anything, he caught its center and held it still long enough to break part of it off. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. It smelled like the dusty road he traveled, the one cutting through the field’s heart. His tongue darted out, but his tentative lick only sent a prickling sensation into his teeth.

Against his better judgment, he nibbled at the broken end of the stalk. Faint moisture, sticky and a little sweet, clung to his lips.

Whatever it was, it tasted like the warm sunshine that inevitably found his daily hideaways. He chewed at the stalk for the rest of the night, using the sharp edges to pick at his teeth when he found a ditch to sleep in for the day.

A use for everything. Nothing wasted.

Some military lessons could apply to life, no matter where he was.

* * * *

Voices woke him.

They were muffled, mostly blocked by the fabric covering his ears. Every dawn, before he went to sleep, he wrapped his thin coat around his head. It gave him extra padding as he slept, but that was a secondary purpose. There were two better reasons he did it.

One, with his head wrapped, he wasn’t immediately identifiable as military. His hair was long enough to stipple across his palm when he ran it over his scalp, but it wasn’t nearly long enough to look normal, not yet, not to really protect him. The fact that he’d have to live up to who he was and what he’d done when he found what he was looking for was an irony he refused to consider.

His other purpose was just as practical. Covering his ears protected them. Nothing could crawl in this way. Strike didn’t teach that in basic. That was a lesson learned in the field, away from barracks and allies, where finding a safe corner to grab a short nap often meant the difference between living and dying. He could stomach a lot, but the first time he’d had to watch a medic pull a roach out of a soldier’s ear, he’d had nightmares for a week. He never left his ears exposed after that.

Even with the coat’s protection, however, the voices were sufficient to rouse him to the day.

“…too paranoid.”

“She’s a dog. It’s what she does.”

“And if she chased down a rabbit? Would you make us go after that, too?”

“Only if you’d brought your gun with you.”

“Then you’d be the one accusing me of paranoid.”

“If the gun fits…”

He opened his eyes to cool dusky shadows. The sun was low enough on the horizon to skim over the surface of the deep ditch, but the crunch of footsteps getting louder meant it wasn’t as safe as he’d hoped. Any second now, he’d be spotted, unless he got lucky and the dog got distracted.

A sharp bark practically overhead announced it was too late.

Though he rolled to his feet in ready alert, he was pre-empted by the sudden appearance of a golden retriever leaping into the ditch. The men accompanying her appeared moments later, though they remained on the upper ridge.

Both were old enough to be his father, skin leathered and chapped from a lifetime exposed to the sun. One was taller, with one of those pot-bellied forms that always seemed to hit skinny men in old age, like it was impossible for them to gain weight anywhere but in their gut. His almost simple smile vanished when he saw what their dog had cornered, and his blue eyes dimmed.

His friend was a lot less subtle.

“Definitely should’ve brought my gun.”

Slowly, Sullivan brought his hands up, palms out to show he was unarmed. “I was just taking a nap.”

“Nobody naps in a ditch.”

The taller one nudged his buddy. “He’s wearing a uniform.”

Shorty’s eyes narrowed. “There’s no fighting around here, son.”

He bristled at the nickname, though years of experience had him biting his tongue. “I don’t fight anymore.”

“Run away?”

“Discharged.”

Shorty snorted. “You think I look stupid? The government’s not about to let an able body walk away. And you look plenty able to me.”

“It’s the truth, sir.”

“Maybe he was too dumb for service,” the taller man said. “Look at the way he’s got his coat wrapped around his head.”

“They’re all too dumb for service.” Shorty waved Sullivan forward. “Get your ass up here. You’re not worth busting up my knee to drag you out.”

He had no fear of either man. Even tired and hungry as he was, he was pretty sure he could take both of them if things got physical. It was the dog he didn’t trust, and short tempers that might order the animal to attack, just because. He moved slowly, first unknotting the coat sleeves to switch it from his head to tie around his waist. His pack came next, and he shrugged it on under the twin scowls boring into him.