Page 3 of In the Cover of Darkness

I think after 17 years of being told what to do I just got tired of it. Sometimes I just wanted to read a book until it was finished or eat a juicy piece of steak when I felt like it. I would die a happy man if I never had to eat an MRE meal again. They were fine in a pinch but after a while, they all just tasted like warm cardboard.

I don't have to worry about that anymore because I'm free, not that I was ever trapped, but after 17 years in the Army I decided to retire and make plans for the future. Put down roots somewhere. Maybe even meet someone and share my life with them.

I need to not get ahead of myself though because this is only day one of my new life. Unfortunately for me, I decided to start it with an eight hour road trip to a town I'd never been to before. All because my best friend Ace said it was what he thought heaven would look like. In reality, the town is called Hidden Valley, which does not exactly encompass ethereal visions, but it looks like any other quaint mountain town from the pictures I've seen.

It can't be too bad if Ace decided to move there. He left our unit two years ago and got a job as a mercenary. Which means for two years he has been trying to convince me to retire from the Army and join him. It didn't take much for me to agree though. He takes a few jobs a year, and he can choose what mission he wants, ones that fit around his lifestyle. It means I'll be able to find some land, build a house, and work when I want to,notwhen someone tells me to.

What I'm most excited about though, is to be able to get a dog. I've wanted a dog my whole life and now at the ripe old age of 35, I'll finally be able to get one. I might even get two so they have company when I'm away on a mission.

It almost feels too good to be true, that I'll be getting the best of both worlds. I'll get the adrenaline of going on a mission, the preparation and planning that goes into it, maintain my skills in combat and relax with a nice bourbon in front of a fire with my dogs to decompress afterwards. The urge I have to tap into something bigger than myself and protect people who can't hasalways been a large motivator in why I joined the Army to start with, and also why I was reluctant to leave it. I need a purpose in my life and without it, I feel like I could never really be happy.

Chapter 2 - Dante

The terrain has been slowly changing as the hours have passed by, going from hard dry land to lush greenery. Now there are patches of snow on the rocky ground and the temperature is dropping quickly. There is supposed to be heavy snow sometime in the next several hours so I wanted to get to Hidden Valley before it hits. According to the GPS I have just under two hours to go. Plenty of time to get there, however with the sun going down, there is not much more light left in the day making it harder to see any patches of ice on the road.

As dusk settles in I feel completely at peace with where I am in life. There's not a soul or a building for miles. I'm completely alone and I feel nothing but content. Well, I was feeling completely alone until I spot a vehicle pulled over to the side of the road in the distance ahead. It looks completely out of place here in the vast landscape. A cherry red sports car ruining my view and my train of thought.

What moron drives a sports car out in this part of the country? Let alone with a possible snowstorm approaching. It's probably a lost tourist who has no idea about the conditions they are driving in.Idiot, I think to myself,what a fucking idiot.

Slowing down as I approach the vehicle, I glance to see if there is a person inside of it or if it's been abandoned. The front two seats are empty and I can't see anything in the small space behind them. Looking back in my rearview mirror, I try to get another glance at the vehicle parked on the roadside, noticing something unusual.

Are those feet?

Ugh, I shake my head, no it can't be. My mind's playing tricks on me because I've been stuck in this damn truck for so long. I could have sworn I saw a pair of feet on the ground, just on the other side of the vehicle. As if a person was sitting on the ground with their legs straight in front of them, feet sticking up toward the sky, face toward the setting sun. I take another glance back in my rear view and try to see anything but it's just a red blob in the distance now. Shaking my head I try to focus on the road in front of me and not that stupid sports car and those damn feet.

I drive for a while but struggle to keep my thoughts on anything other than that sports car, and how unusual it is to see that type of car in the mountains, especially as winter has almost set in. I'm lost in my thoughts when I pass a dingy motel on the roadside. This must be the closest town before Hidden Valley, I mean, if you can call it a town. A motel, gas station and a diner are on the highway, and there looks to be a small township further behind them.

Stopping at the gas station to fill up my truck, I don't want to get stuck while trying to make the final stretch to Ace's house on a quarter of a tank of gas. The GPS tells me I have just over an hour's drive to go. I'll be staying with Ace for a while until I find somewhere of my own. He's almost finished a small apartment above his garage which he's said I can move into if I help him finish build it. It's a pretty appealing offer because I'll get myown space, but also don't have to move several times while I find land to build my own house on.

Once again my thoughts drift and I start thinking about that sports car again and those feet. Why did something feel wrong about it? There is something I just can't quite figure out.

Suddenly, all of the pieces start to fit together and I realise what was bothering me. I saw feet, not shoes, not boots, bare fucking human feet. There are several reasons that I can try and rationalise why someone would be sitting beside their car. The simplest was that they were watching the sunset. But why in the hell would they do that without shoes on in below freezing weather? Something is definitely wrong with that scenario and I have to go back and find out what it is.

The ride will be more than 20 minutes drive in the wrong direction. So around 40 minutes added to my overall journey. Fuck it, I'm still going back to check. I message Ace telling him I'm going to be a little later than I thought, pay for my gas and start driving back the way I came. Something stirs in my gut and I know I need to drive a little bit faster than the cruising pace I was going before.

Chapter 3 - Mila

Wolves - Down Like Silver ?

Ihave no idea where I am and I am not upset about it. In fact, I don't give a flying fuck. I'm free, that's all that matters right now. No more living like the shell of the person I was, no more violence and no more fucking Trevor! I feel liberated, or at least I felt liberated, until the dull ache in my left wrist started growing into some serious throbbing pain. Every bump in the road seemed to aggravate it and it's swelling badly too. I couldn't bring myself to look in the mirror, but I know my eye is still swollen shut. Thankfully, I've stopped bleeding, at least I think I have. I can't taste the coppery tang of blood in my mouth anymore so that's a small positive. I must have been driving for an hour or so before I felt safe enough to pull over and check my handbag. I almost passed out from knocking my wrist, but thankfully I didn't. The last thing I needed was for someone to stop and see me unconscious behind the wheel, I would end back right where I started if that happened.

I had an almost full tank of gas, my handbag contained my wallet, a half eaten muesli bar, lip balm and a small empty bottle of water, but no cell phone. I must have taken it out to chargewhen I got home. I guess the positive side of not having a cell phone is that I don't know if Trevor could have tracked it, so it's one less thing I need to worry about. My wallet has all of my IDs, bank cards and $27.30 in cash. I thought I had more money, but I forgot to take out the allowance that Trevor gave for petrol and groceries. I don't want to use my bank cards because he will be able to see where I am by the location showing up on the bank statement.

Control of my bank accounts is just one of the many things I've given up over the years. It's not like we are married to even warrant shared banking, but one day a few years ago he took me to the bank and we changed my accounts. I didn't want to but I also didn't want to cause a scene either. I could see from the look in his eye and how tightly he gripped my arm that it was going to happen and I needed to comply or else I'd pay for it later. In the end, he still hit me that night. He thought I was flirting with the bank manager when we closed my accounts and transferred all of my money and savings into his bank accounts. I'm grateful that the bank manager set me up with a card in my name so I still had access to our money if I needed it. Trevor controlled our money like he controlled everything else so I didn't bother to try and take extra cash out each week. I didn't even try to build a secret savings to use if I ever left him.

I think I've been numb to what was happening in my life for a long time. Maybe it was my pride getting in the way thinking that there wasn't an issue. Or maybe I just blatantly ignored the red flags when we first started dating; all because a cute guy was showing me interest. Trevor's comments just wore me down enough that I believed he was as good as my life was going to get. That I should be grateful for having him look after me. That was one of his go to lines,you're so lucky I'm here to look after you,andyou couldn't do better than me, another favourite of hiswaslook at you, you're nothing without me. I think I just heard it so much that I couldn't see a way out of the world he created around me.

It felt like I was driving for days, the hours merging into one another, taking breaks when I couldn't keep my eyes open. I saw the sunset, the sunrise, and now I'm sitting here on the roadside watching the sunset again. It's beautiful right here and I feel content to justbefor the first time in a long time. I can see a vast valley floor in front of me and the sun has just faded behind the mountains in the distance. The sky is a brilliant orange and red, with deep purples appearing as it slowly gets darker.

There are angry looking clouds behind me and the car radio said there was a snowstorm expected, but there's not a chance in hell that I'm going to stay in that stupid car a minute longer than I have to. Everything hurts and I'm exhausted, but I'm going to enjoy this final sunset and these last moments. I don't think I'll survive the night with the weather turning and being stuck in the middle of nowhere. So if I'm going to die then I'm doing it on my terms, and not in Trevor's car. I shouldn't say it, but it would be bittersweet to mess up the interior by succumbing to the pending snowstorm and dying on the leather seats he so lovingly polished every month. I would want to come back as a ghost just to see his reaction when he discovers my body tainting them, and then I'd haunt his ass for how badly he's treated me.

I drove until I ran out of gas. I should have thought harder about stopping to get petrol but I just wanted to get as far away from Trevor as I could, and it's not as if I have a lot of money to waste on petrol, retrospectively though I should have. I haven't heard a single car pass me since I've been sitting here, maybe one, but I can't be sure and I don't know if I really care. I don't even think I'd try and get their attention even if I could.I've been in so much pain for so long that I'm not sure I even feel it anymore. I feel numb and detached from everything that happened. Either that or the cold of being outside has worked like an ice pack and literally numbed everything for me.

I've gone past the point of being hungry. I couldn't eat that muesli bar from my handbag because my jaw was too sore. Ironic that I will die hungry because Trevor always taunted me about my weight, often saying that I needed to stop eating because I wasn't as small as he likes. Maybe that's his final dig at me.

This isn't where I thought I'd be at this moment in my life but also right now I don't care.

I.

---