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_{A NEW WORLD:}

RETURN

A Novel by John O’Brien

Dedicated to my mother, June O’Brien. Thank you for all of your help, all that you do, and for making this book and series possible.

Author’s Notice

The New World series is a fictional work. While some of the locations in the series describe actual locations, this is intended only to lend an authentic theme. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Prologue

The sound of feet running behind him was constant as he ran through the darkened streets. On this clear, summer night, the moon was out and almost full causing his skin to tingle only slightly from the reflected light. It wasn’t as bad as when the other bright light, which caused immediate and intense pain, was in the sky.

He and his pack of seven behind him were out searching for something to eat as they did most every night. He became leader of this pack because of his greater strength and ability to locate food. There was food to be had in plenty, it was just a matter of finding it before the other packs did or had a chance to get away. There was the two-legged and four-legged kind — that was how he thought of them. They had found and chased down one of the four-legged ones last night; large enough for the whole pack to feed. The two-legged ones were his favorite but were becoming hard to find. Plus, they had to be cautious as he had lost several of his pack to them. They were smart and crafty and had to be taken with care.

That was another reason he was the pack leader, most of the other of his kind would rush blindly at them in a persistent manner. Sometimes this worked and sometimes they paid for their rashness.

His thoughts did not come to him in the form of words but more in images and smells. He was cunning and could think through situations, finding ways to get food and other things they needed, but it was not a familiar thinking pattern. The pattern consisted of images that were similar to complete pictures that tell a story; both simple and complex in nature. He hunted primarily by means of smell and had become adept at picking up the faint smells of food, sometimes up to a couple hundred yards away if the wind was right. The scent was different somehow than the smell of everything else. It was more like a warm scent, if a smell could have a sense about it, along with a certain sweet mustiness. The smell from the others of his kind was not appealing in a food sense. No, there would not be any form of cannibalism there.

Not that he thought along those exact lines as he ran through the streets. Up ahead, he saw the flash of another, smaller pack quickly cross his path several streets up; vanishing quickly into a side street as he listened to their echoing footfalls diminish. Along with his heightened sense of smell, his vision at night was adequate as he was able to pick out the varying shades of gray relatively well and it seemed to improve almost nightly. The moon certainly helped.