The Devil Dog Trilogy: Out Of The Dark

by Boyd Craven III

  “Naw, drive through. I’ll hook the ‘lectricity up after you come in. Just drive real slow like, so I can keep up with ya, or I’ll use this old hog leg on ya,” he said, patting the .44.

  “Yes, sir,” I said as I got in the Hummer. After a heartbeat, Courtney followed.

  “You weren’t kidding when you said her dad didn’t like you.”

  “I don’t get that. He should like me; everybody should like me. You like me, right?” I asked her, trying to break the tension.

  Crickets.

  “Dick, you’re a nice guy in your own way, but you have this… killer instinct… no, that’s not it… deadly fog… no… Um…”

  “I’m a living and breathing shit magnet?” I asked her.

  She snapped her fingers and pointed at me, “That’s it!”

  “Great,” I said, and fired up the Hummer and drove through the gate.

  We were both aware that the old man was staring at the Hummer, looking into it as we drove past. I waited, and when he got the gate closed, he climbed on the quad and turned it around.

  “Follow me,” he said, and took off.

  “You nervous?” Courtney asked me rhetorically.

  I managed a nod and swallowed a lump in my throat. I started down the driveway slowly, and her hand covered my right hand that was on the shifter, and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  “You’re going to be ok,” she said quietly.

  I couldn’t respond. I was even more nervous than the first time I’d asked a girl to a school dance. If I strained, I thought I might remember her name, but I was too focused on not crashing the Hummer. It was that hard, every muscle was so tense, and even turning the steering wheel was an agony of effort. Still, as we rounded the corner, I saw that the t-111 siding on the house had been painted a dark green, the same as the roof, and decided they’d probably done that in an effort to make the cabin not stand out from a distance.

  I pulled up next to the old man and got out. The fields, the kitchen garden, even the small barn that held the one tractor and workshop was all the same. Everything was lush green, and for being so far out in the middle of nowhere, they had grown up used to going without power. Their homestead and farm had been built in a time when there was no power.

  I saw a feminine figure walking out of the woods with a young boy and I smiled, standing there awkwardly, but feeling the tension ebb away. She was a way off, but she looked up as if at something the boy said, and I could see her squint. She all but threw what looked like a .22 into the surprised boy’s hands, and took off at a mad dash. The boy shrugged and turned to walk back toward the way he’d come. I wanted to run out there, but I was rooted to the spot. The old man looked at me, and then Maggie, and his scowl cracked, and he gave me and Courtney a grin.

  “He loves that little girl something fierce,” the old man said, then turned toward the house where I heard a door bang open.

  Mom and Mary stood there. Mary’s jaw dropped open and she took off at a jog toward me. I looked to my left, Maggs. To my right, Mary. Everything I had fought for, everything I’d wanted.

  Maggie got within ten feet of me, outpacing her mother and seemingly launched herself into the air like Superman. She tackled me to the ground and tried to squeeze the air out of me. I hugged back as hard as I could and tried to get up. She’d grown so big. She was no longer the little girl I’d remembered. It had been so long. Tears threatened to overtake me and I stood, holding onto her with her head buried in my neck. Mary stood before me and Courtney had tears running down her cheeks.

  “You made it. I thought… a long time ago, I thought you’d be…”

  “Uncle Mike, I’m so glad you made it back home!”

  “Who’s Uncle Mike?” Courtney asked.

  Everyone looked at her and then to me, and I let go of Maggs as I fainted.

  “How long have you been off your meds?” Mary asked me as a cool washcloth wiped at my face.

  I startled awake and tried to sit up. I’d fainted in the grass, in front of the Hummer.

  “I… Um…” My throat was dry, and my memories were a swirling mess.

  “Wait, he’s Mike? Then, who’s Dick?” Courtney asked, a heavy dose of anxiety dripping from her words.

  “Dick was my husband. He served with Mike here. He was killed in action and Mike here tried to… I mean,” Mary’s words choked up.

  I sat up and felt for the pocket that held the picture. I pulled the flap and held up the picture.

  “Yes, that’s the picture Dick was looking at when he died. You promised him that you’d bring it back to us,” Mary said softly. “Can you get up?”

  Somehow I could, and did.

  “Somebody tell me what’s going on?” Courtney said with a quiver in her voice that I didn’t like. It was fear. Fear and uncertainty.

  “Come inside, dear,” Mom said. “This isn’t the first time. Pops, make sure he don’t fall again. He’s got so much gear on this time, you’d think he’d fought a war.”

  “Um… he sort of did,” Courtney said, but she was following.

  The old man had me by the back of the pants and Mom had an arm around my shoulders. Normally, this wouldn’t be possible because she was only as tall as Maggs, but my legs didn’t want to straighten and they felt watery.

  “Well, that’s par for the course. Come on with us and we’ll explain.”

  “Is he going to be all right?” Maggie asked nobody in particular.

  “He will be,” Pops said. “He’s a tough old bastard.”

  How long had I been off my meds? The pieces were starting to fall into place. I was Mike. Dick Pershing, I was not. But I’d been Dick for so long, at least in my mind, that it was difficult to make things out.

  “I really need to know what’s going on,” Courtney said, helping Mary pull off my vest, and then all of the gear I had strapped to me, until I was down to a t-shirt and my pants.

  “What do you know about PTSD?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist.”

  “Well, I am. I’m not asking you to be snarky or rhetorical, but it would help if I knew what your understanding of it was.”

  “Oh… um… stress from having seen or done bad things?”

  “That’s close enough,” she said. “Mike here has a bad case of it, plus he’s also been diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder.”

  I tried not to cry when I saw Courtney flinch.

  “Mike lost not only both of his best friends, he killed one of them directly. When he was captured and tortured by the Taliban, it really did a number on him.”

  “Do you remember all of this?” Courtney asked me.

  “Pieces. Incomplete pieces to a puzzle.” I did not remember the torture, maybe in time, but that one was new to me.

  “Why did you think you were Dick?”

  I felt in my pocket and the picture wasn’t there. I started getting frantic, and I was about to roll off the bed when Courtney handed it to me. She’d been holding onto it, keeping it safe.

  I flattened the slightly bent picture out, looking at the bloody thumbprint. Dick’s thumbprint.

  “Part of that is my fault,” Mary said, not meeting either of our eyes.

  “Why is that?” I asked her.

  “Because for a time, I thought I’d fallen in love with you.”

  Memories came crashing back. The days and weeks of recovery. My escape from the Taliban. Setting up an ambush because I had forty of them running after me. Using the same trap and ambush techniques I’d been taught by King, to whittle their numbers down in order to escape, only to have the fragments of an IED or grenade hit me, just as I got within sight of a US military base. Then, I’d woken up bloody, bandaged, and with no idea where I had been. I had memories of killing James, of failing Dick and letting him bleed out, while I’d exacted my revenge on the man who’d been part of the ambush at the bank, when we’d been under sniper fire.

  Somebody took my hand, and when I looked, it wasn’t Mary. It was Co
urtney. She gave me a squeeze as if to encourage me. Not all of it was fake. Not all of it was false memories. I did love Mary, and for all intents and purposes, Maggie was my daughter. The wife and child of my best friend. We’d fallen in love, I thought, and then I’d let the darkness overtake me.

  “Dick… er… Mike… I don’t know what to call you.” Courtney started sobbing.

  “Do you have my box?” I asked Mary.

  “Yes, I never threw it away. Even after they said that you had died.”

  “I keep hearing about me being dead, but it keeps not happening.”

  “Dick Pershing really is dead,” Courtney told me, giving my hand another squeeze.

  “Oh, man. This…”

  “I’ll be right back,” Mary said, getting up, her eyes glistening.

  I sat up and coughed. It hurt, down deep. The memories were coming back; so quick, so fast. Of making love to Mary in this very bed. Of fishing with Maggs, of endless doctor’s appointments with Mary at my side… both before we were together and after. The thing that killed me though, was that deep down, somewhere in my dreams, I’d always known the truth. As ugly and horrible as the dreams about James had been, he’d told me plainly. He’d reminded me of who I really was. The horrible ugly truth had been there the whole time and I’d ignored it, in favor of my delusions.

  “You’re still a good man,” Courtney said. “Even if you’re not who you think you were.”

  “Why aren’t you running and screaming? I’m damaged goods. Crazy. Coo coo.”

  “Because I think you need a friend right now. Somebody who understands the darkness inside.”

  “I do,” I told her, squeezing her hand back.

  “Does Maggie know?”

  “That me and her mom…?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think she suspected, but it was such a short period of time. It was during the heroin days for me.”

  “Daze?”

  “No, days. The days I lost to drugs. I stayed away from them. I couldn’t… didn’t want them to see that. Didn’t want anyone to see that. It’s… there’s a lot. I don’t know what’s real.”

  I felt her squeeze my hand again, and I looked up to see her eyes were tear-streaked, like everyone else.

  “What now?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll even remember who I am next week.”

  That was when Mary walked back in. Her eyes were red, but she had finished her crying in the hallway, where her parents and Maggie waited. I opened the Nike shoebox, and inside were four rubber-banded stacks of photos. I pulled them out and set them on the bed. One by one, I started going through them. Mary would help remind me who the people were in the photos, the places I didn’t recognize, but other than that… This was my life.

  I suddenly remembered where I’d seen them, at the hospital when I had been restrained. It had been a year before the EMP had hit. I had showed up at the farm, strung out and lost. Mary had had me committed until I’d been deemed safe enough to be released, knowing that if I went off my meds, quit therapy and went back to drugs, it was only a small stopgap. In a fit of clarity, I’d asked her to hold onto my personal belongings so if I ever showed up again in a confusion, I’d be able to find my way back home.

  Maggie walked in, ignoring a death glare from her mom and plopped on the bed next to me, crowding Courtney out of the way. Courtney wanted to give her a dirty look, but a smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth. Stay with somebody long enough, day after day, you learn their body language. Still, the kid had some ‘cajones’ to bust in and ignore the ladies’ ugly looks. Instead, she grabbed the pictures out of the stack and started shuffling them, till she held one up.

  In it, Dick and I were standing side-by-side, wearing button up denim shirts, blue jeans, and sporting cowboy hats. He had an AR and I was holding a KSG, the one I still carried. In it, Maggie was barely big enough to look over the top of the shooting bench that was on the far side of the property, overlooking the looming hill.

  “This is where you and my daddy taught me how to shoot,” she said, turning to look me in the eyes and smiling. “Do you remember, Uncle Mike?”

  I did, and I nodded.

  “You remember the advice you gave me that day?”

  “Don’t point your guns at nothing you don’t want to kill,” I told her.

  She nodded. “Unless, it was an annoying boy.” She grinned.

  “Wait, that was your dad who said that.”

  She shrugged. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who mixed up events in my mind.

  “I don’t really want to shoot anybody, but when I saw the picture box coming out I wanted to show you, and to see how big I really was back then. I’ve been teaching the boys around here how to shoot. They want to join up with the local militias.”

  “Maggie!” Mary said, anger creeping into her voice.

  With that, her mom and dad stepped inside the bedroom.

  “Well, it’s true. The President has been talking about the attacks on the radios. They’re in Texas. As long as that boy who stinks doesn’t try anything, he’ll be safe… but I might have to shoot him with Momma’s BB gun, if he doesn’t stop.”

  “Does this stinky boy have a younger brother?” I asked her.

  “You talking about Russell?” Her cheeks turned bright red.

  “Here we go again,” Courtney said, standing up and flinging her hands into the air.

  Mary looked to Courtney, her daughter, and then to me.

  “What?” Mary asked after a minute.

  “Is there some kinda local dance being set up around these parts?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we’re talking about having it a week from tonight, actually. Almost like an early Thanksgiving, but it’s more about the harvest time,” Mary’s father said.

  Maggs looked at me intently.

  “Russell plans on stealing a kiss at the dance,” I said, feeling wicked for enjoying the sight of Mary’s eyes flaring wide in anger.

  Her father started chuckling, but was biffed in the stomach by her mom. “I’ll shoot him with the BB gun, myself!” she said.

  I cracked up. In a moment, everyone but Maggie was cracking up.

  “You going to be around long enough to shoot the kid for me, Mike?” Mom asked.

  “If you’ll have me for a time.”

  “Well shit, you’re almost family. We’ll just have to fix up a bedroom for you and your lady friend. You both can bunk in the one near the furnace.

  Courtney shot me a puzzled look.

  “It’s in the basement. Warmest spot in the house in the winter,” I told her.

  “The winter is coming, Jon Snow,” Maggie intoned.

  I looked at everyone, confused. They laughed.

  I’d spent so much time thinking I was someone else, spent so long pining after a girl I couldn’t have, that it felt weird waking up next to Courtney. There was no more awkwardness between us. Part of me still ached for Jamie, the only woman other than Mary that I had felt love for, but with time, talking with Mary and going through my memory box, life came back to me slowly. I felt more complete than I could remember. When I woke up from a nightmare, Courtney would be there to calm me, ground me. Together, we were both mourning in our own ways, and learning how to move on.

  I thought at first it might be weird for Mary, but I found out that she’d remarried and then been widowed again in the last few years. She was still too raw to think about me any way, other than a friend, and once things started clicking into place, I realized I felt the same. Losing the woman I’d thought I’d loved to false memories, didn’t hurt as bad as it should. I won’t lie. I missed Jamie, and on more than one occasion as I rested and healed my mind, I found myself getting the radio out and staring at it. Wanting to call her. The biggest thing I’d learned from living in the sewers of Chicago with my motley crew of family, then journeying across the country, was that no matter how bad things seemed, it can and does get better - if you try.

  This may n
ot have been how I expected to view this day, but I had my surrogate daughter, two ladies who thought fondly of me, some almost-parents who had put up with me, and a lot of memories to sift through. Out of the darkness, I’d found my light. I’d found my faith and I’d found my direction in life again. Soon, we’d be heading to Texas. There would be no rest, until the New Caliphate was put down.

  “Dick, are you still up?” Courtney asked me from the darkness, her hand rubbing my shoulder the way she would when I’d awaken from a nightmare.

  “Yeah, but I’m going to sleep now,” I said, and lay down next to her.

  Two friends, finding the light together.

  =-The End-=

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  Author’s Note

  I want to thank everyone for following my characters through this trilogy. I want to say up front that I’ve never served myself, and any and all screw ups are mine and mine alone.

  I’m sure somebody out there can think of someone like Dick. Some may have it better, some may have it worse, but we’ve all seen what mental health issues, substance abuse and PTSD can do to a person and family.

  Keep our veterans in your thoughts and prayers, if you are a prayer warrior. Without them and many like them since the birth of our country, freedom wouldn’t be what it is today in the USA.

  Now, I did finish this trilogy, and although I won’t be writing more in Dick’s world directly, follow up in reading The World Burn’s Series. Book 9 is currently being written, and it bridges the gaps between books 1 and two. The World Burns 10 should tie things in all nicely, and Dick and Courtney may be back in cameo, doing what they do best:

  Blowing up bad guys and trying to heal. A friendship forged through the fires of horror, pain, loss and grief, yet never ending friends forever.

  Thanks for reading!!

  Boyd

  About the Author

  About The Author –

  Boyd Craven III has penned over 20 books over the last two years, only recently deciding to take the plunge into publishing. His "The World Burns" Series has hit the top 10 in the Dystopian Genre in the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia. Boyd has made his home in Michigan with his wonderful wife and about a million kids, but travels to Texas to visit family as frequently as possible.