THEM (Book 0): Invasion Read Free

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