Stranger In The Night

“Joshua! No—stop!”

Small bare hands gripped his arm. The woman’s voice called his name again. Joshua!

He halted, fighting for breath. Blinking back sweat. Trying to focus.

Two vehicles swung onto the street, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Police.

He read the word and shook his head. That wasn’t right. It should be written in Arabic, a language he knew almost as well as English. Something had gone wrong.

The police cars stopped, doors opened. The enemy fled.

Joshua rubbed his hand over his face, wiping away perspiration as he tried to make sense of it. Where was he? Was this the nightmare again?

“What’s going on here?” The voice spoke in English, and he saw the face. The order came at him. “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!”

Who was this man? He couldn’t move.

“Joshua? Joshua, are you all right? Please talk to me.”

He recognized the eyes, the lips. “Liz?”

“Give me the knife, Joshua.”

He knew her. This was Liz Wallace, and he was not in Baghdad. He handed her the weapon.

“Ma’am, I’ll take that. Do you know this man? Is that your dog over there?”

In the light of the cars’ headlamps, Joshua saw the dog lying on its side in the street. He tensed. Dead dogs often hid explosive devices—IEDs. Didn’t these people know that? Why were they kneeling around the animal, touching it?

Others, mostly children, streamed from a nearby building. Haven.

“Duff—hey, man. What’s going on? What happened?” Sam Hawke laid a firm hand on his shoulder, stepped close. His voice was low. “Time to let your guard down, Duff. Relax. This is St. Louis.”

Joshua blinked. St. Louis. Of course it was. He knew that.

Sam’s voice again. “It’s all right, Officer. This man is my guest.”

Hawke edged Joshua off the street and onto the sidewalk. “Okay, listen to me. I’ve been through this drill before, Duff. You’ll get used to it after a while—the constant triggers. The spurts. It’s confusing, takes you back into the conflict. But you’re with me now. Let me handle things, okay?”

“Yes.” It was all he could manage.

Standing on the sidewalk, Joshua watched his friend return to the cluster of people in the street. Still breathing hard, he tried to force his brain to reconfigure. He wanted to believe Hawke.

St. Louis.

But how? The situation had been identical to what he’d encountered countless times in the alleys and roadways of Iraq and Afghanistan. Street patrol, confusion, insurgents, dogs, children, the innocent mingled with the enemy.

Yet, this was different. English signs, police cars, street lingo. A white woman, no uniform, head uncovered. Soft curly hair framing her pretty face. She approached him now.

“Joshua?” Her voice was soft, lyrical as she said his name. “Are you hurt?”

How could he answer that? Of course he was hurt. Everything hurt. His head, his body, his conscience, his heart. Could he ever explain what the years had done to him?

“I need to re-up,” he said. The words came from someplace deep inside. “I don’t know how to exist outside it.”

She stepped closer, leaning into him. Her shoulder was warm against his. Tension ebbed at once. Clarity returned.

“The dog…Did I—”

“No, it wasn’t you. One of the others had a knife, too.”

Joshua bent his head, massaged his brow. If his focus had been off, he might just as easily have been the perpetrator. This was bad. Sam Hawke’s guard dog—now one of Haven’s few defense systems—lay dead in the street.

“I need to talk to Hawke.” He started forward, but Liz slipped her arm around his.

“Stay with me.” She looked at him, her eyes deep. “Let Sam and Terell deal with the police. They know what to do.”

She was silent for a moment before speaking again. “You scared me.”

Joshua lifted his focus, searching for stars. He saw none. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Well…tell me what just happened.”

“You saw what happened.”

“Look, Joshua, in my work with refugees…I’ve studied trauma and terror. The constant presence of death. I know what those things do to people. I understand PTSD.”

Joshua couldn’t hold in a groan. Post-traumatic stress disorder. He’d listened to endless lectures about PTSD—before he deployed, amid the conflict and when he got back. He knew the symptoms. Knew he had them, too.

So what? Everyone who had been deployed had at least a little PTSD. Troops who hadn’t seen a second of combat had heard incoming fire, mortars exploding, A10 tank killers and Apache helicopters cutting the air overhead. Everyone had seen things, heard things, done things they didn’t like to remember. Joshua had always believed that those who couldn’t transition were pathetic.

He was not a weak man.

Besides, he didn’t like the cure for PTSD. Talk, the experts said. Talk to someone—a counselor, a minister, a loved one. Tell your wife. Tell your girlfriend. Spill your guts.

Exactly what he didn’t want to do. Why talk about something you’d just as soon forget? Why relive the close calls? No man in his right mind wanted to explain how it felt to be shot at, to handle the dead body of a close friend, to kill an enemy combatant. Joshua didn’t want to admit his fear, his grief or his guilt. Who would?

The way he’d always handled it was to hunker down and try to forget. When he couldn’t forget—which he finally understood he never would—he focused forward to the next deployment. Back in the saddle with others who understood. In his youth, he drank too much in an effort to manage the pain. Now, anger sometimes masked it. But rage and alcohol were not solutions. Control held the answers, he believed. Self-control and constant prayer.

“I know it’s not easy to talk,” Liz Wallace said, snapping him back to reality. “But I’d be willing to listen.”

“No thanks. I know how to handle a transition. Been through the process many times. There’s always an adjustment period. Doesn’t last long.”

“Meanwhile dogs die.”

Joshua stiffened. He could see people loading the animal into the back of a car. Through shards of light, he distinguished Sam and Terell amid the throng. Others—teens and kids—swarmed the street. Terell was calling out, trying to regain control. Sam focused on the dog. Raydell paced, anger and frustration in every step.

And now Stephen Rudi approached.