Whistling Past the Graveyard by Jonathan Maberry

Author:Jonathan Maberry [Maberry, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JournalStone Publishing

-2-

It seemed to take forever to walk across the bridge. Donny felt as if his feet were okay with the task but his heart was throwing out an anchor.

He paused halfway across and looked back.

Behind him was a million miles of bad road that led from here all the way back to Afghanistan and Iraq. He was amazed he’d made it this far home. Donny always figured he’d die on a cot in some dinky aide station in the ass-end of nowhere, way the hell out on the Big Sand. God knows the world had tried to kill him enough times. He touched the row of healed-over scars that were stitched diagonally from left hip to right shoulder. Five rounds.

Should have died in the battle.

Should have died in the evac helicopter.

Should have died in the field hospital.

Lost enough blood to swim home.

The dead flesh of the scars was numb, but the muscle and bone beneath it remembered the pain.

And beneath that suffering flesh?

A heart that had ached to come back home, when there was a home to come back to. Now that heart beat a warning tattoo as if to say, this is not your home anymore, soldier.

This isn’t home.

All the way here, with every mile, every step, he wondered why, after all these years away, he was coming back here at all.

He closed his eyes and felt the river wind blow damp across his cheeks.

The house he grew up in wasn’t even his anymore. Attorneys and real estate agents had sold it for him. His parents’ stuff, his sister’s stuff, and everything he’d left behind when he joined the army had either gone to the Salvation Army or into storage.

Donny realized he didn’t know where the key was for that. A lawyer had sent it to him, but…

He gave himself a rough pat-down, but he didn’t have any keys at all.

No keys, no change in his pockets, not even a penknife to pry open the storage bin lock.

Shit.

He turned and looked back as if he could see where he’d left all of that stuff. Did someone clip him on the bus? Was it on the nightstand of that fleabag motel he’d slept in?

How much was gone?

He patted his left rear pocket and felt the familiar lump of his wallet, tugged on the chain to pull it out. He opened it, and stared at the contents.

Stared for a long time.

Donny felt something on his cheeks and his fingers came away wet.

“Why the fuck are you crying, asshole?” he demanded.

He didn’t know how to answer his own question.

Slow seconds fell like leaves around him.

A car came rumbling across the bridge, driving fast, rattling the timbers. Crappy old Jeep Grand Cherokee that looked so much like the one Jim used to drive that it tore a sob from his chest. Sunlight blazed off the windshield so he couldn’t see the driver. Just as well. Maybe it meant the driver couldn’t see a grown man standing on the fucking bridge crying his eyes out.

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