THEM (Book 0): Invasion (2 page)

His eyes rolled around again and centered on me. He paused, and I thought I’d finally gotten through to him. Then, he lunged up at me with lightning speed, bowling me over and landing on top of me. Out of habit, I pulled him in between my legs into the jiu-jitsu guard position and got a forearm under his chin.

Unfortunately, he had already grabbed me by the neck with both hands. He pulled my face toward his with such force I thought he might snap my neck.

In a split second his face was just inches from mine. He snapped his teeth at me in a pecking manner, bobbing his head forward and apparently trying to take a bite out of my face. The scary thing was, despite having years of Modern Army Combatives training, I couldn’t move his hands off my neck. He was
that
strong. I’m not a small man, but in all my years in the military sparring with guys my size and bigger, I’d never grappled with someone who had this much raw strength.

He’s on drugs
, I thought.
Great.
I was already freaking out from the panic attack that had come on just moments earlier, and the spots in my vision were getting larger. I knew it would only be seconds before I blacked out, and none of the bystanders were moving to help. I looked around frantically for assistance, unable to even speak, only to see a bunch of dumbfounded looks among the sheep standing by watching the scene unfold. No help there. In seconds, I was going to be a snack on Señor Bath Salts’ menu, and I’d end up another fatality in a viral “News of the Weird” story.

I was about to pass out when finally, I snapped. I went into full-on batshit mode and let my survival instincts take over. I reached down and drew the Kahr CW45 that I always carry on my right hip, placing it under the dude’s left ear and firing. The bullet exited his skull at an angle that saved me from accidentally shooting an innocent bystander, but brains and blood sprayed out all over the people who were standing on that side of the crowd.

As I rolled the guy’s now limp body off me, people scattered everywhere, their screams and shouts erupting all around me. A quick glance around revealed that a few people were still recording the scene on their phones, but from several yards away. I looked over at the guy I’d just been trying to save, saw the exit wound, then promptly turned my head and barfed. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen wounds like that before, but I’d nearly been choked to death, I was still having the panic attack from hell, and frankly the idea that I’d just killed the guy wasn’t sitting well with me at all.

I could hear people starting to react to what had just happened. More murmurs, some outraged voices, others shouting and arguing. I heard tones of disbelief, angry voices‌—‌still others were speaking in dickheadese.

“Did you see what happened? That guy with the scarred up face just killed that poor homeless person!”

“Man, this is going to get, like, a million hits! O-freaking-M-G dude, this is going to blow up my followers!”

“I would have done the exact same thing, absolutely. He did the only thing he could have done. Yep, the only thing.”

Again, I tuned them out and my training kicked in as I began assessing myself for injuries and scanning the scene for further threats. I heard sirens, but they weren’t from an ambulance pulling up. It was Constable Randy Taylor, the local law dog. I holstered my weapon and stood up with my hands away from my body and in clear sight. Randy got out of his cruiser, weapon drawn, then he saw me and the guy on the ground and quickly holstered it. He reached up to click his radio mike, rattled off something to his dispatcher, and quickly shuffled over to me.

“Randy, it was self-defense. Honest. I was doing CPR on the guy, and then he just jumped up and started choking the shit out of me. Couldn’t get him off me, and I was going out. Had to do it.” I had my hands on my knees at this point. I was starting to hyperventilate again.

Randy strode up and grabbed me by the arm, dragging me over to the front of the building, whispering in my ear. “Aidan buddy, I’m going to pretend that what you just said was, ‘It was self-defense and I need to speak to my attorney before giving a statement.’ Sound good?”

I nodded. He’d just reminded me that anything I said could be used against me in a court of law. For the most part, our county was fairly conservative, and would likely look favorably on a justified self-defense shooting. However, you never knew when you’d get an assistant DA who might be itching to make a name for herself, and that could lead to charges, even if the cops on scene reported that it appeared to be self-defense.

Despite the fact that I have a Mick name, I hardly look like a poster child for the Aryan race. Take one overzealous prosecutor and add an all-white jury who could be convinced that this was just one drunk Mexican killing another drunk Mexican, and I’d be sent up for twenty and change. No thanks. So, I took Randy’s cue and zipped it.

Randy sorted of hunkered down in front of me and looked me in the eye. “You know SOP says I have to take you in on a shooting fatality. That means in cuffs. You okay with that?”

I nodded, and allowed him to take my sidearm and cuff me before leading me back to his cruiser. The windows were tinted, the motor and AC were running, and it was cool and quiet inside. I noticed that Randy had left the cuffs loose, and I realized he was actually doing me a favor by putting me in the patrol car.

I sat there for about 30 minutes while Randy and several sheriff’s deputies took statements and kept the crowd from tampering with evidence. It took about ten more minutes for an EMS crew to arrive, but they were really only there to transport the body to the morgue. One of them stopped by the patrol car to check me for injuries, but I waved him off and signed an AMA form. Soon after, Randy strolled over and hopped into the front seat of the vehicle.

He remained silent until we’d pulled away from the scene and got down the road a bit. “Witnesses all pretty much said the same thing. You stopped to help the guy, he collapsed, you did CPR, and then he attacked you. We grabbed a couple of cell phones that recorded the events. A couple of folks weren’t too happy about it, but they said they wanted to help. Told ‘em they can come by the station and get them back after we’ve copied the videos over.”

He paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Looks like it was a justifiable shooting. Not a jury in the county that would put a good Samaritan war hero in jail, no how.”

I barked a short laugh, and Randy chuckled in response. “Well, maybe if the DA played it just right. But the thing is, I’m pretty sure I can make this go away before it even gets that far. With the video, we should be able to show that you acted in self-defense. The fact that you were providing aid before the attack will likely clinch it. Case closed.”

Randy attempted to make small talk after that, but I just wasn’t in the mood. Soon he got the picture and we rode in silence until we pulled up to the Sheriff’s office about 20 minutes later. Randy opened the back door and helped me out, and I followed him inside. Despite Randy’s assurances, I decided to have a local attorney show up at the station. He sat with me as I gave my statement to the investigator who worked homicide for the county. Three hours after that, I was released without charges filed. Before being released I was told not to leave the area, just in case they needed me for further questioning. The lawyer told me he thought no charges would be filed. I had my doubts, but there was nothing I could do.

One thing was for sure, though; I was still freaking out. It was all I could do to hold things together while I sat through questioning. All the deep breathing exercises and other mental tricks I’d learned weren’t working, and I knew the only thing that would cure this and settle me back down was either a shit-load of Xanax, or heading out into the woods to be by myself for a good long while.

I decided to do both, but not necessarily in that order. So after Randy took me to get my truck, I headed straight home to pack my gear for a long trip to the boonies.

TWO

MISSILES

ONE THING I QUICKLY DISCOVERED after coming back from Afghanistan was that living in the sticks did a world of good for my head. Maybe it was the Native American in me that I got from my mom’s side, but I felt closer to God out in nature than I ever did in church. Mom was Catholic and dad was Protestant, so I spent a lot of time at church growing up. Church didn’t stick, but the faith did. Call it superstition, or just wishful thinking, but I’d always felt a deep and abiding Presence in the wilderness that I’d never felt anywhere else. Bottom line was that out in the sticks was the only place I ever really felt at peace. Well, there and hunting terrorists.

I suppose that’s why when I first came home, I spent six months living between my family’s hunting cabin and several primitive camps I’d set up on our ranch in the Texas Hill Country. The land had been in my family for generations, and included several thousand acres along the Frio River north of Leakey, Texas. It was worth a bundle now, what with all the rich folks from Austin and San Antone wanting to come out here and settle, but my dad was stubborn and refused to sell.

Good on him. Besides, he didn’t need the money. Dad had bucked the family tradition of ranching, and instead had gone to school and gotten into insurance. He now owned a thriving insurance agency in a suburb of Austin. This meant I had the ranch and cabin all to myself, and that was how I liked it. My parents respected my need for isolation, so they more or less left me alone out here year round.

Due to the nature therapy more than anything, things had been getting better for me lately. I wasn’t experiencing as much social anxiety anymore, so I’d started taking classes at the university extension down in Uvalde. The plan was to apply to physician’s assistant school once I had all my prerequisites out of the way. I found out back in Afghanistan that I liked saving people a whole lot better than I liked killing them, and figured it was time to do some good in the world for a change.

But even when my brain was healthy, I liked staying out at the ranch. Any time I spent there was a chance to relive some of the best memories of my childhood. When I was a kid, I’d always looked forward to holidays and summers spent visiting my grandparents out there, and weekends spent hunting with my dad and granddad were always a treat. Everything I knew about hunting and stalking game in these hills I’d learned from my grandpa, and it was knowledge that had served me well in the mountains of Kunar and Nuristan many years later.

But despite all the progress I’d made, my run-in with Señor Bath Salts had definitely triggered an episode. So I headed out to one of my more remote camps just as soon as I got home from the sheriff’s office. Sure, the cops had said I needed to stick around, but I interpreted that as meaning “don’t leave the county.” I called my attorney before I went traipsing off into the boonies and told him that I’d be indisposed for a few weeks. He didn’t like it, but agreed to handle things should the cops decide they needed another interview.

Whatever. I’d resigned myself to the fact that what was going to happen would happen, and there was nothing I could do about it. I needed some space and time to clear my head, and that’s what I was going to get. I’d built my destination campsite a few months earlier, way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. I set myself up for an extended stay in the primitive A-frame cabin I had at the site.

But no sooner than I’d gotten settled in, it started raining like the first day of Noah’s forty. I hunkered down in the cabin for the first week and watched it pour, then finally I got bored and decided to hunt for some fresh meat. After a few hours and a good soaking I got lucky and bagged a couple of rabbits that I found hunkered down in a brush pile. But, as luck would have it, I also caught a monumental case of walking pneumonia.

By the next morning I was delirious with fever and way too weak to hike back to the main house on the ranch. I set out some pots and pans to gather rainwater, then I bundled up on my cot and tried not to die from fever and exposure. Besides the occasional trip to the front door of the cabin to piss and retrieve enough water to prevent my imminent demise, I stayed more or less on my back for the better part of two weeks. Probably the only thing that saved me was a stash of antibiotics that I had in my pack, and some expired ibuprofen that I found in my first aid kit. Well, that and the fact that I’m too damned stubborn to die from my own stupidity.

It took me a couple of days after the fever broke to gather enough strength to get up and move around. I soon managed to build a fire and made some broth using the bouillon cubes I always kept in my pack. By the next morning I was back on solid food, and by that evening I was ready to get back to the main cabin for a shower and a good hot meal.

After being out of commission for so long, I decided I’d check in on civilization by tuning into the news on the little emergency weather radio I kept in my pack. It worked on solar power, or I could charge it with a hand crank, and I’d found it to be a handy addition to my typical load out. Besides giving me a way to get weather intel, if I ever got too lonely out in the sticks I could always tune into the nearest country station and get really depressed.