The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(6)

Peter sat on Dinah Johnson’s back stoop, waiting for her to come home from work. The suitcase stood closed in the shadow of the steps. On his leg, his restless fingertips kept time to that endless interior metronome. Charlie and his little brother, Miles, were inside, doing whatever boys did in the odd, lonely freedom before their mothers came home from work.

The wind blew hard, another big autumn storm system moving across the continent. No rain, not yet. Early November in Wisconsin, Veterans Day next week. It was dark before suppertime, and getting colder. Frost on the windshield at night. Charlie had already offered Peter hot chocolate twice. He was a good kid. Both concerned and maybe a little relieved that Lieutenant Ash the crazy dog tamer wouldn’t come inside.

Peter preferred the outdoors.

After mustering out at Pendleton sixteen months before, he drove north to Washington, where Manny Martinez, another of his former sergeants, was roofing houses outside of Seattle. He left his truck in Manny’s driveway, dropped the keys and a note into his mailbox, then hitched a ride northeast, past Marblemount, into the North Cascades. Shouldered the heavy pack and headed uphill alone into the open. Staying off the main trails, above the tree line, away from people, away from everything. He planned to be out for twelve months.

It was an experiment.

—

He was fine overseas. No, not fine. The war sucked, especially for the infantry. A lot of people were trying to kill him and most of his friends. But it was also exhilarating, a series of challenges to overcome, and Peter was very good at it. Did his job, did it well, took care of his people. Even if it cost. And it did.

Leaving aside the dead, the injured. There were plenty of those. Peter’s friends among them.

But the guys still walking around, the guys still in the fight—it wasn’t easy for them, either. Some of them had trouble falling asleep, or had nightmares when they did. Overwhelming emotion, fits of tears or fury. A few guys really went off their nut, wanted to kill everyone. Peter had his ups and downs, but stayed pretty steady. His captain called him a natural war fighter. He spent eight years at it, two tours with very little time between deployments. The unit had essential skills, that’s what the brass had said.

So, the war aside, he was fine until he got off the plane at Camp Pendleton for the last time.

Approaching the officers’ quarters, that was when he first felt it. A fine-grained fizzing sensation as he jogged up the barracks steps. A vague feeling of unease somewhere in the bottom of his brain.

As he walked down the hall, opened the door to his quarters, and stepped inside, it flared into a jittery feeling, a quadruple espresso on an empty stomach. Unpacking his ruck, he felt the muscles in his shoulders and back begin to cramp up. He thought he might be getting the flu.

He showered and changed his clothes, sat at the little desk to do paperwork, but the sparks in his head were rising with a panicky feeling that was impossible to ignore. He couldn’t stay in the chair, and he couldn’t focus on the pages in front of him. His shirt felt too close at the neck.

Then his chest began to tighten. He had trouble catching his breath. The walls got closer, the ceiling lower. His heart a sledgehammer in his chest.

He didn’t even bother to put on his socks and boots, just carried them down the hall and out the main door into the open air, where he could begin to breathe. He told himself he needed some exercise, and walked around the base for a few hours. It helped.

When he went to the mess for supper, it happened again. The mess hall was too loud, too crowded, and the fluorescent lights flickered like those in a horror movie. He cut in line, grabbed a burger, and fled. He ate outside, walking around, wondering what was wrong with him.

When he went back to his quarters, the pressure in his head grew faster than ever. He knew after five minutes he’d never manage to sleep in there. So he pulled a blanket from the bed and found an empty hilltop out in the scrubland that made up most of the base.

How he survived through the final days of mustering out he didn’t know. Drinking helped, but it wasn’t a long-term solution.

He called it the white static. His very own war souvenir.

Which was why he came up with the experiment.

The hypothesis was simple. If the white static came when he went inside a building or in a crowd of people, Peter would spend a year outside, alone. Living out of a backpack, up above the tree line when possible, with only the mountains for company.

Maybe give the static a chance to get used to civilian life and fade out completely.

The first days were fine, hiking steeply up through the ancient evergreen forest. As he got tired of listening to nothing but his own thoughts, it got harder. He had no phone, no music player. But after two weeks, his head felt transparent to the world, his thoughts blown from his mind. The static was replaced by the sound of the wind. It occurred to him that he might never go down to the so-called civilized world.

After what he’d seen, he wasn’t that impressed with humanity, anyway.

Up in the high country, he lived mostly on lentils and rice, wild greens, and trout caught with his fly rod. Gourmet living. Coffee and hot chocolate were his luxuries. He started with several big caches of food hung from trees in bear-proof cans. He thrived up in the granite and heather for four months without needing to resupply. He walked a vast loop through the North Cascades, keeping off the marked trails. Usually off any trail at all. It made him feel wild and pure and clean. He thought it might cure him.