Since I know that there ain’t a chance in hell I’m getting back to sleep tonight, I flip on the lamp knowing that the light won’t wake Inez up, open my detective novel, and read until it’s time to go and deal with the first troubles of the day.
***
When I told the old man that I was enlisting, he squinted at me like I’d grown a second head.
“What the hell kind of dumb shit reason did you do that for?” he asked, and then went right back to bailing hay.
The old man had been drafted during Vietnam, and being young, dumb, and full of cum, he’d rejected Grandpa’s offer to pay his way out of it.
“Worst fuckin’ mistake of my life,” he’d tell us over and over while me and my brothers were growing up. “I should’ve let your Granddad just have his way.”
He ended up being in the jungle for two years before he took some landmine shrapnel in the chest. The funny thing is, the injury that got him out of the jungle was almost identical to the one that got me shipped home, too. Of course, my legs and arms were shot to shit on top of that. But the chest wound and my punctured lung were what almost killed me. All the other holes were what made me have to relearn everything.
After coming home to the ranch, I completely understood why the old man hated his time in the military, and the government in general. The damnable thing is that the citizens of the United States aren't the ones who forget the people who fought for them and their "freedom" (by the way, the U.S hasn't fought for anyone's freedom since World War II. The half-dozen some odd conflicts since then have all been rich men's wars, particularly the last three), it's the government. The minute one of the wounded steps off the transport and sets foot (or wheels, or metal appendages) on the ground, the Feds turn their backs and run. They forget all the promises they made to you when they were trying to get you to sign on the dotted line. You become a ghost; a living, breathing ghost.
I was lucky when I came back. I still had my limbs. Outside of the nightmares, my head was intact. The nightmares were easy to deal with. I could handle a little lost sleep, even if it lasted for the rest of my life. I knew they wouldn't truly effect who I was as a person. I knew they wouldn't cause me to lose my job (not that I needed one), or a spouse (Inez knew about my time in the Army, and the first time I startled her awake with the dreams it scared her bit, but ever since then, she knew to just keep her distance until I calmed myself down. She's not even disturbed by them anymore and hardly ever wakes up), or more important things like my sanity. But there are buddies of mine who came back missing arms and legs; with broken backs and minds, and their lives are a constant battle.
Not only do they have to try and adapt to the world again, but also they have to fight their former employers every single inch of the way in order to get what they need to become productive private citizens—things that were promised to them and then weren't delivered. Compared to most of these men and women, I've got it easy. I might be living with the ghost of my best friend waking me up at 2:30 in the morning every night, but at least I'm not itching at a ghost limb, or living on the street because paying for my treatments and medicine has drained me dry. I count my blessings every day because of this, and vow to do whatever I can for those who can't help themselves.
Chapter 6: Henry, Apache Junction, AZ
I'll be the first to admit that I've never understood what women get out of planning weddings. I mean, I get it, what woman doesn't want to be treated like a princess at least once in her life? But I never in a million years thought Inez would be the type of woman who would be into that type of thing. I figured when I asked her to marry me a few months back that all she would want to do was go down to the courthouse, buy a marriage license, and go and stand in front of the judge. And I'm sure that would've been exactly her reaction if I hadn't opened my big dumb mouth and told her she could do whatever she wanted for the wedding. Yeah, no one's ever accused me of being a genius.
But, you know, all the planning and preparation makes her happy, and that's all I really care about. I'll admit, though, that I can't say I've been exactly all that happy with it. It's not that I hate it or anything, but it's just not in my nature to care about things like decorations, menus, and whatnot. But I've been participating—which mainly consists of me nodding and smiling whenever Inez and the wedding coordinator stick something under my nose—because I know that it's important to Inez. There are certain things that drive me a little battier than others, though. Like looking at napkin and tablecloth colors for nearly three hours, now that will drive any man to drink. And it’s also exactly what we did today.
Not that it made me want to go and down a bottle of Jack afterward, but it did make me go and jump on my horse and go riding for a couple of hours. I mounted up my favorite mare and rode her hard under the dusty gray winter sky until the both of us were sweating bullets and panting. My brain was a complete blank as I stared down at the long dirt road that leads from the Ironwood Highway to the ranch. I mostly had my eye on a pack of javelinas rooting around in the brush, gnawing on juniper and hoping to stick their snouts in a nest of termites, when all of a sudden I saw a cloud of yellow dust coming up the road. As far as I knew, none of the boys from the bunkhouse had headed into town today, so whoever was coming up the road so fast probably wasn't someone I wanted around. I kicked my mare and headed back to the house at top speed so I could meet whoever was speeding up my road before they hit the main drive.
I made it to the house just as the Border Patrol truck pulled up in front of the house, and I was greeted by a face I hadn't seen since Inez's troubles over a year ago, my older brother Sam, and his face was covered in blood.
***
There are certain things you swear to yourself you'll never do again when you become an ex-soldier. Most of the time they're promises that you know you'll be able to easily keep. Me, when I came back from Iraq, I promised myself two things: I would never take another human life, and I would never pick up my sniper rifle again. I broke my first promise when I had to deal with the coyotes who were chasing after Inez. After that, the killing stopped because Sam knew the crackers who were after her and he laid down the law.
I broke my second promise tonight because of the people who my brother led to my home.
If these men had been strictly chasing Sam, there’s a better chance than not I would’ve told him to go fuck himself, that he’d made his own bed and now he needed to lie in it. But these men, they weren’t after Henry—they were after his girlfriend.
“She’s in the witness protection program, and they finally tracked her down.”
Obviously, my big brother hadn’t been aware until very recently, perhaps only a few minutes ago, that she was in WITSEC. His voice was so full of heartbreak and bitterness that I almost wanted to pull him into my arms and give him a hug, which is something I’ve never done with Sam. But instead of a hug, I locked him, his girlfriend, and Inez in my safe room and I dug out my Armalite AR-50 and my night vision goggles.
Then I waited up on the hillside above the house until those cocky sons of bitches began creeping towards the house from the brush, and watched as each and every single one of their heads turned into pink mist.
Chapter 7: Sam, Apache Junction, Arizona—Two Months Later
This was easily the happiest day of Sam’s life. He had to admit, he could easily count the number of happy days he had on one hand, but this one without a doubt topped them all.
Today, he was marrying the love of his life.
In the two months since he led the people who were after Angela out to the ranch and Henry dealt with them in the way Henry knew best (It was a debt that he knew he would never be able to repay him, and one that he knew re-opened a lot wounds for his little brother.), the FBI decided that Angela was probably safer out at the ranch with Sam and Henry looking after her than moving her to another location. Plus, the FBI was keeping a tighter eye on her than ever, especially with the Koloffs trial heading into high gear.
In those t
wo months, Sam and Angela had really gotten to know each other. Not the happy facades they’d presented to one another over the last six months, but their real selves, warts and all. She let him get to know the money launderer and mistress, and he let her get to know the smuggler, the wheeler and dealer, the crooked cop, and neither one of them seemed to mind the other’s past mistakes. Because they were, after all, mistakes.
And as they grew closer, they started talking about having Sam come along with her into WITSEC. He was resistant to it at first, he had a life down in Mount Lemon, after all. He had a job and friends. But when he really started thinking about it, what kind of life did he really have? Every day he risked his life, his freedom, and all for a few dollars. And without Gloria, none of it seemed to matter anyway. But the only way he could come along with her was if they were married.
He felt a light touch on his arm and he turned and faced the woman of his dreams. She gently smiled up at him, her eyes brimming with tears of joy. Seeing her in her simple white gown choked him up a bit, and a single tear streaked down his face. Angela reached up and wiped it away, both of them smiling.
“They’re ready,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.
“Isn’t it bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding?” He asked with a chuckle.
“I don’t believe in luck,” She said, her face breaking into a smile. “I just believe in you.”
He took her in his strong arms and pulled her tightly into his chest. No, Sam didn’t believe in luck, either. What he believed in was this. He believed in this woman in his arms and the life that they would build for themselves no matter where they ended up in life.
They broke from their embrace, their faces bright with tears and joy, and then Sam offered his arm to Angela, and they made their way to the alter and the rest of their lives.
THE END
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Desired by the Alien King
Blinking her bleary, groggy eyes, Gwendolyn tried to focus her mind on the last thing she could remember. The shooting pain in her head—where did that come from?—did not make it any easier.
She and her archaeological team had been going through the Sarmian excavation. The desert around them was gorgeous. It reminded them of the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert of North America back on Earth, except the browns and tans and the ruddy and rusty colors were streaked with green and grey. Being surrounded by all that beauty had made them wish they were tourists instead of scientists. But they had gotten to work well enough, for each of them was well accustomed to interplanetary travel. More exciting than Sarma itself was the idea of who lived there and what first contact with them meant. Gwendolyn and her people were living the dream of not only every archaeologist on Earth, but every biologist, every biochemist, every political scientist and historian, every philosopher—practically the whole of humanity. They were on the cutting edge of the most exciting thing to happen in human history since the confirmation of extraterrestrial life itself.
The Sarmians were not merely extraterrestrial—they were humanoid. They had human forms, human anatomy. Except for the trail of hair descending from the hairline of the scalp to the bridge of the nose, they could easily pass for human, at least physically. It was something that science had always deemed biologically impossible, but it turned out to be one of the times when the universe yanked the rug out from under science. The Sarmians had become Earth's great obsession and people from every discipline were all but foaming at the mouth to have a crack at studying the planet and those who lived there.
And Gwendolyn Rush had snagged for herself the singular honor of leading an archaeological team to the desert wilderness of Sarma, into the ruins of an ancient Sarmian society, to dig for clues to why the Sarmians were so much like humans.
What they were seeking was not just insights into how ancient and prehistoric Sarmians might have lived, but also confirmation of the only theory that could explain them, a theory so radical that it could have been easily dismissed if the very existence of the Sarmians were not such a radical thing. What the scientists of Earth hoped the planet Sarma might yield was any clue to the identity and nature of the aliens who, the theory held, had come to Earth eons ago and abducted prehistoric humans, taking them across the stars to guide and shape their evolution for some unknowable purpose. The Sarmians were one riddle whose answer might expose a greater one.
And that was what brought Gwendolyn light years from Earth into the heat and dust and undeniable beauty of another planet, supervising other archaeologists and students in the digging and scraping and sorting and categorizing for later study of structures buried in the sand and the objects and artifacts that they contained. As much as Gwendolyn loved and cared about the work, it made her wish that she were a leaner and lighter woman. Gwen was pretty—an almost luminous beauty in fact—with a soft round face, bright blue eyes, and an incandescent smile. When she did not have her hair bound up in a scarf or rolled up under a hat, it fell in loose black curls about her shoulders. But it was in the mid section that she felt a bit ponderous when she went to work on a dig. Her hips, buttocks, and thighs had somewhat more of a spread than she would have liked. At times she would watch the female students who accompanied her on digs, note their hips and thighs that lacked the same spread, and think, A decade and a half ago, that was me.
But then, a decade and a half ago Gwendolyn was not one of the youngest leaders of the field of xenoarchaeology, whose perseverance had contributed to humanity's greater understanding of the non-human species of the galaxy. A decade and a half ago she could only dream of leading the effort to understand the other human-like species in the galaxy, something that biology had predicted man would never see. Even if she was not what the most desirable men wanted to take to bed, there were compensations.
Work on Sarma proceeded uneventfully until Gwen and the crew noticed a greying of what had been a perfect blue sky, and a low sound like a million heavy breaths exhaling coming in from the distance. They all looked up from their tools and their excavations and found something growing and looming into view on the horizon. It was a spreading vastness of ruddy brown emerging over the hills in the distance, and it could mean only one thing. Gwen cursed the luck. While modern Sarmian society was as advanced as Earth in many ways, they did not have a lot of the niceties of Earth, such as weather-tracking and severe weather dissipation systems. On Earth, massive sandstorms rising out of nowhere had ceased to be a problem long ago. Sarma, damn it all, still had them.
As the airborne tsunami of sand came rushing in, Gwen ordered everyone to cover up their work, throw on scarves and goggles, and take cover themselves. She had just gotten her tools into an electric wheelbarrow along with some pottery whose markings and symbols she wanted to study and covered her eyes and her face when everything around her disappeared into flying sand. She pulled her electrolocator out of her pocket and turned it on, meaning to use it to find her way around by detecting masses and other moving bodies in the low visibility of the sandstorm. The screen on the device showed the shapes of structures and devices around her and the moving forms of the rest of her party. It also detected two other moving bodies coming up behind her, which she took to be simply two other members of her team looking for shelter.
And it was then—ah-ha, then!—when that damn pain in her head started. She
wondered now if she might have accidentally backed into something, but no, she remembered that the electrolocator showed nothing in the flying sand behind her but those two moving bodies. Her next assumption was that one of them had run into her. What sense did that make, one of them running into the back of her head? Which led to her next hypothesis: she had been struck on the back of the head, deliberately hit. And that was when the sandstorm and everything else disappeared into blackness in her memory.
Now, opening her eyes and wincing from that nagging throb in her skull, Gwen started to become aware of other things. There was something unfamiliar under her, soft and cushiony and satiny. And whatever she had on, it wasn't the durable fatigues that she had been wearing on the dig. It was soft too, luxurious and flowing. Getting her vision back into focus, Gwen saw that she was in a circular room with windows from floor to ceiling on every side. Outside and stretching out all around was a panorama of the Sarmian countryside in which she had been digging, with whirling and billowing clouds of sandstorm whipping through it, thinning here and thickening there. Inside the room, everything was red and gold and magenta. It was all silky, satiny fabrics, drapes and blankets and carpets, divans and cushions and Ottomans, and a very large bed on which she was resting. And Gwen was dressed not for an archaeological dig, but in a flowing gown that suggested activities of a totally different sort.
Desired By The Cowboy (Love In Collin's Ranch 2) Page 3