Mike Dolan

"There you are, I told you something was up"

- Mike Dolan to Simon

Mike Dolan is a minor antagonist in the final Power of Five book Oblivion. He is a villager in the Suffolk village where Holly also comes from.

Origins
It's unknown what Mike did before the Apocalypse, but it's presumed it was manual work because of his brute strength. He adjusted alarmingly well to the New World Order, despite his apparent religious faith, he was indifferent to the mass amounts of death and chaos around the world. He was a patrol officer in the village along with his friend Simon Reade and he was an enforcer, killing many travellers or trespassers on the border all to keep his village concealed.

He also may have been one of the men who dug up the motorway surrounding the village to conceal it from outsiders.

Biography
One day on one of his daily inspections of the edge of the village, Mike and Simon took a shortcut home through the church when they found Holly, who was behaving oddly like she had something to hide. This secret was revealed as Jamie Tyler, when Mike doubled back because he knew a lie when he heard one, and found Jamie there, bloody, as if he'd been in a fight, and when Jamie also lied to Mike, Mike clubbed Jamie unconscious with his gun barrel and told Holly she was in very serious trouble and to run home.

Mike wanted fame so he rushed to the Council and told the leader, Sir Ian Ingram, what had happened, that there was an outsider in the village. Mike then had Anne Keyland go round to Holly's house to bring her to the meeting.

At the meeting, Mike jostled with Simon to report Holly as a lawbreaker and Jamie as a dangerous spy. All lies, of course. Mike also encouraged Jamie to be sold to the Police but the Traveller (Graham Fletcher) gatecrashed the meeting and said Mike was insane for wanting the Police to come even to take Jamie. Fletcher said, if the Police came, who knows whether they'd let anyone live.

Mike was still eager to sell Jamie to the Police (despite the Traveller's warnings, the warning had actually infuriated Mike) and Simon agreed, wanting the reward, however Rita, who was Holly's stepmother, said that Jamie was young enough to be Mike's own son and here he was eager to torture and betray the kid. Rita said Mike was a cruel boy and he had not improved with age. Mike was humiliated.

Later, when Jamie and George got into a fight, Mike Dolan was one of those present and he looked eager to punish Jamie in particular.

When Keyland betrayed the whole village to the Police, Mike and Simon along with the whole village came out, as Commander Eleanor Straike demanded where Jamie had gone. Keyland said she didn't have Jamie, and Eleanor shot her dead. Rita then said Jamie had left long ago, and then Eleanor ordered the Police to massacre the whole village, regardless of their innocence. Mike was sprayed in the eyes with nerve gas and ran off screaming, and presumably died in the bomb attack minutes later.

Nature
Mike was a cruel, arrogant individual and even the Apocalypse and mass slaughter didn't affect him. One would think that with entire cities razed and millions dead, Mike would aim to be a little more humane, but unfortunately this didn't register with him and in Rita's words, he had never changed his cruel ways. He was even eager to betray and torture Jamie, a young boy, just for money which, in the Traveller's words, they had no need for.