A man can leave the military, but it never leaves him.
I don’t even need the flashlight as I set off at a steady run.
Right along the edge where tumbled rocks rise up into the mountain bluffs, the Milky Way and the moon lighting my way plenty.
In NYC, I’d forgotten how gorgeous a sky can look without all the city lights blocking it out.
Being out here, it’s like standing in the middle of the universe.
I let that calm my thoughts as I hit that patch of brush marking the start of the mountain cut, picking my way through to find the trail.
It’s slower going here.
Less flat terrain and more overgrowth so choked it’s almost like someone—probably Libby, maybe even Mark—deliberately let it all go so the path would be harder to pass.
One way to discourage people from skulking around, I guess.
I frown, pausing for a sip of water.
There’s something from the survey maps sticking with me.
Something about the flat elevation at the center of this cluster of mountains and bluffs, and this path leading right in.
All the old tapped-out mining veins marked on the maps around it, but nothing in that one clear spot?
Seems like the perfect place for mining.
There are tons of stories about little towns that started up and then petered out as their ore veins did. A lot of them lost to history with no one remembering their names or much else, nothing left behind but shanty houses crumbling to dirt, given back to the land.
Heart’s Edge used to be one of those towns, but its location plus the deeper veins of silver out where the Paradise Hotel used to be made sure it stuck around longer than most.
Common sense tells me there’s nothing amazing down this road.
But hope and optimism tell me I might just find something worthwhile.
Especially when, after jogging forever, I almost trip over something unexpected.
A wagon.
The remnants of one.
It’s old, the kind with the big old spoke wheels and timber framing that says it used to have a cover stretched over it, Oregon Trail style, though I doubt the owners died of dysentery.
The actual wagon bed’s nearly rotted through, the whole thing a tilted and tumbled mess on the side of the road. The only things really intact are a few metal pegs and banding here and there.
I crouch down next to the wreck and pull out my flashlight, checking it over.
There’s paint clinging to the wood, something that might’ve been letters once, but I can’t make out a word. Old ragged bits of leather, too, though that’s been chewed to hell and back.
I can imagine the cougars out here had a fine time using it for a scratching post.
I lift my head, squinting farther up the road.
No reason for a wagon to be going down there unless there’s somewhere to go to.
No reason for a road that leads nowhere.
With a fresh charge in my step, I haul myself up and move.
Moon’s starting to set. I must’ve gone some six, seven miles by now. I was faster in my military days, but I was also jogging on open terrain.
From the maps, this whole cut goes about twenty or thirty miles into the mountains.
Sunrise, I tell myself.
I’ll go till sunrise, and then I’ll accept defeat, turn back, and get the hell off Libby’s property before she kills me.
I pass a few more things—more broken-down wagons, some rusty mining tools, even the remains of a fence, all things that get my heart racing and my legs pumping faster.
Finally, I stumble through a knot of trees grown over the road and—
And into an entire goddamn town.
What the hell?
I’d been expecting to find a few small shacks or the kind of old-timey gold-panning rigs they’d set up across streams to catch flakes and nuggets in the runoff from the springs that riddle this area.
This is a fuckton more than that.
There must be more than a dozen buildings—all of them constructed to last, and they’re still standing so someone did it right. Proper framing and varnished boards, though the varnishing’s worn off over time and everything’s dirty as sin.
I glance around, taking it all in.
Church, houses, something that looks like it used to be a bank.
I think I even see an old police station, and inside some rusted iron bars.
This isn’t some ramshackle settlement, but a proper town.
The crazy part is it’s not on any damn maps I’ve seen.
How’s an entire ghost town just sitting here, and nobody knows about it?
Back when I was a kid in the elementary school, they’d always tell us these old Wild West stories to keep us entertained.
Some crazy shit about bandits roaming the hills, full of half-truths. A name comes back to me, my seventh grade history teacher writing it on the board.
Ursa.
No one ever said where Ursa was.
Never saw it on a map.