The Dream Virgin: A Ventures Nest Thriller

by Don Quine

  Fred heard Reimer take a snort, then tell her he was a big boy, didn’t need Daddy-O to tell him what to do. He could take care of himself as soon as Fred stopped wasting time and told the pet fuckers what to do, where to send the cash. He’d be just fine and dandy then.

  Fred asked Reimer if his shoulder wound was bad and he told Fred he was tired of Lady Luck pissing on him, the night going great, borrow this jock’s ragtop to pick up a few late night snacks when these assholes pull up and ruin things with their rolling coal routine.

  While Reimer took another snort, Fred reminded him luck had nothing to do with acting smart and if Reimer didn’t start doing that instead of dumb shit like he and Seymour just did, then Fred was finished watching his back.

  Feeling it was time to tell him, Fred told Reimer the pet fuckers couldn’t be blackmailed, told him why, and said she was working on another approach, but he had to chill.

  Fred waited for Reimer to say okay like he did when he knew she was right, watching out for him when he acted stupid.

  But he didn’t.

  Reimer said, “Fuck you, Fred.”

  Then there was a long silence.

  Then Reimer laughed and said he was only fucking with Fred. He knew he and Seymour needed to lay low and do like Fred wanted, so he’d get stitched and they’d head for the hideout, but he was still bummed out not being able to blackmail the pet fuckers; the hassle of hiding the videos in Scarface all for nothing.

  There was a much longer silence.

  Then Fred told Reimer he should know better than to joke around when shit was serious. She told him to take a crank break for a few days, give it a rest, that Adele and the gang would join them at the hideout. Might get there before them. There were enough provisions to last a month if they watched how much they ate.

  Since cellphones didn’t work in the forest, Fred would send a Greenpeace camper to let them know what to do.

  CHAPTER 52

  Minutes after the cops left Fauna and Ray got hit on the head, then bounded, gagged, and tossed in the shed by the barn, Aaron saw to it that the Pigs got their drugs, guns, and money from their campers, tucked their Vet outfits in their backpacks, and put on tactical vests and camo jumpsuits.

  Aaron had them do it lickety-split, slipped Jeff and Janette two grand for their trouble, got the gang on their bikes hidden in a collapsed church in rear of the ghost town, then left the back way, out a few miles then down the canyon; before you know it, up into the Willamette forest where it was easy to get lost unless you knew your way.

  The old couple shot their dogs with the .22 rifle they kept in the trailer that had an oil-filter silencer Jeff made. It made them feel bad having to kill the hounds, but it made their story more convincing.

  They had a couple of belts of Smirnoff, brewed some coffee, and went over what they’d say. They knew they’d get the third degree so when the thumps from the shed by the barn started they were ready.

  The couple helped the security cop out of the shed, removed the gag in his mouth, untied his hands, said to Ray Stewart they had no idea that he was in there until they heard his thumping.

  They walked Ray into the barn, poured him a cup of Folgers and told him the Vets went nuts.

  Janette put some ice in a sandwich bag for Ray to put on his head.

  Jeff said they never saw anything like it, maybe their PTSD detonated or something, but they completely freaked.

  “They ran around yelling the Russians are coming!” said Janette.

  “They asked did we want them to shoot us for our own protection, so we wouldn’t have to die from Red torture, which was the worst.”

  Janette nodded, angry.

  “Like shithouse rats, the crazy sonsabitches shot our dogs cuz they couldn’t have nobody tracking them to the KBG, and took off on Route-3.”

  Jeff said responsibly, “We called 911, so they ain’t going too far.”

  You had to look quick to catch Janette giving Jeff the stink eye.

  Rahim and George showed up in Fauna about an hour after Jeff and Janette freed Ray from the shed, and they listened to the old couple’s story.

  Then they spent a while looking around the ghost town with bright flashlights and checked the little church out back, and the dead dogs, made a couple of calls and when they returned to the barn, Rahim had a paper bag in his hand and asked the old couple to sit down on the hay stack.

  “I hate liars,” Rahim said like it was a secret, “especially old ones.”

  Rahim nonchalantly pulled out a switchblade.

  “Know why I feel that way?”

  The couple stared at the knife.

  “It’s because old liars have been making up lies for a damn long time. Probably got a pack that’s stacked ten miles high.”

  George said, “Like the Vets that lived here freaking out, shooting your dogs and taking off down the highway on their Harleys to kill Russians?”

  Rahim opened a paper bag, emptied Jeff’s oil-filter silencer on the ground and clicked the switchblade open.

  The old couple flinched.

  “What do you think? Think you could add that lie to the stack?”

  When his lower lip began quivering, Jeff bit it.

  Rahim said politely, “Let’s not waste time. You lying sacks of shit don’t start spilling your guts, we’ll slice the truth out of you.”

  Ray Stewart watched alertly, hand by his empty holster.

  George popped a toothpick in his mouth, stepped forward, pointed to the vending machine near Fu-Manchu.

  “Can I get you folks a soft drink?”

  George flicked open a bigger switchblade than Rahim’s.

  “Help you folks swallow your lies?”

  Jeff began to blubber. Janette gave him the elbow.

  George asked Rahim, “Ready to cut through their bullshit, Fareed?”

  Rahim flashed his blade and nodded.

  “Since they don’t seem to hear too good, let’s cut open their eardrums, got to be a serious amount of hard wax way down in there.”

  They moved in slow with sick faces that made Jeff scream.

  Janette shook her head at her husband in disgust.

  “If you wasn’t such a wimp you’d see they’re acting like they’re in some cheap-ass crime movie.”

  She looked at Rahim and George and smirked.

  “They ain’t gonna do dick!”

  While Rahim and George took a moment to consider her comment, Ray Stewart walked up to Janette, and pulled out a pistol from an ankle holster.

  “This is a reality show, not a movie.”

  Ray shot Janette in the foot.

  She screamed a lot louder than her husband.

  Neither of them knew that it was a pellet that left a blood red splat on Janette’s weathered boot, not a bullet, because the bang was stunning and the pellet was painful.

  “Accidents happen in real life,” Rahim said.

  “All the time,” said George.

  Ray turned his pistol to Jeff’s groin.

  “Sometimes more than once in different places.”

  CHAPTER 53

  The backdoor MD who put eleven stitches in Reimer’s shoulder told him he was lucky it was just a graze; another inch would have shattered the humeral head. When the doc handed him a bottle of pain pills and Reimer smiled, the doc lifted Reimer’s upper lip, frowned, and said, “Catchy dentures, boss, but you should fire your dentist, letting your gums get all grungy like this.”

  Reimer shoved the quack back and yelled, “I want a fucking gum opinion, I’ll ask Wrigley, asshole!”

  Which caused the big nurse seated on a chair by the medicine cabinet to stand up and shout, “Shut your fucking meth trap!” and pull a sidearm out from under from his scrubs.

  Then things got out of hand.

  When it was
all over, the doc, the nurse and Seymour were dead and the examining room was a bloody mess.

  Reimer was okay about it though. He felt bad for Seymour getting shot in his pink eye before Reimer could shoot the nurse twice in the chest and slit the doc’s neck, but he liked the idea of being on his own awhile.

  After he ransacked the medicine cabinet and looked outside, Reimer saw that the Joe with the panel truck had split, but he left Seymour’s bike by the curb. So about three in the morning, all quite on the outskirts of Athena, no sirens meant nobody probably heard the shots, Reimer slipped out of the side door of the quack’s house and climbed onto Seymour’s bike.

  Cops would figure he’d go west on the 82, head up to Canada, not take the 82 east past where he and Seymour fixed the lumberjacks.

  Once he got down through Enterprise on the back roads he’d take the 350 up into Imnaha a couple of hours, another hour into the Seven Devils range above Snake River, and he’d be where the cave was that he used for hunting when he lived in Lake Meadows, before the dumb bitch and her wolfdog and the kid fucked up his life.

  Reimer figured he’d be snug in the cave by sunrise.

  Fred and Daddy-O were gonna be pissed at him for the latest mess when they found out, but they’d be worried about him, too. So after a few days he’d go by the Buckhorn rim reception tower, give Fred a call, explain how the quack mouthed off about his gums, then his fucking nurse pulled a Beretta and shot Seymour before Reimer could do the nurse and the quack.

  Running out of the Peruvian flake was a bummer, but Reimer felt okay knowing he had a backpack with Vicodin, Dilaudid, and Zoloft to help him keep his head clear. Help keep the Loudmouth from running off with his put downs, coming on louder when things weren’t going good. “Put the dress on you little sissy!” “Tell the truth now, you loved playing with that hog’s curly prick!”

  Loudmouth had a nasally voice like a cartoon character who’d be a snake or spider, something scary. Reimer tried tuning Loudmouth out by getting into a Morbid Angel tune he loved. He played it loud in his head.

  Loudmouth didn’t dig death metal drums. They shut the fucker up.

  CHAPTER 54

  Aaron rubbed eucalyptus oil on his ankles to ward off the wood lice, the eight other Pigs sitting around in the high-noon shade, playing cards, trying to keep a positive attitude, but edgy not knowing what was up.

  It’d been two days and Reimer and Seymour should have been there by now unless they ran into trouble. No Greenpeace camper to clue them in, either. The eunuch looked beyond the break of Douglas fir, thought how nice it would be to be back home in the commune helping Daddy-O with the slaves. He liked the Colorado Rockies better than the Oregon Alps.

  Then he saw the birds.

  “What the hell!” Aaron said.

  The Pigs looked up in the sky where Aaron was looking and what they saw from their hideout tucked back in the forest was Ed and Al putting on a show.

  “It’s fucking hawks!” said one of the Pigs.

  “No. They’re fucking ravens!” said another Pig with binoculars.

  By the time all the bikers got to look through the binoculars to watch Ed and Al loop and dive and circle above them, Aaron pocketed his eucalyptus oil and said, “A black and a white raven suddenly flying around up there doing tricks. That’s not right. Ravens are only black.”

  The gang folded things up, packed their backpacks, covered the shelter with twigged canvases, and uncovered their bikes so they could split quick, like Aaron said they should.

  Then out of nowhere the stings started.

  “Shit!” “Aaugh!” “Damn!”

  The gang slapped their necks and arms, looked for wasps or hornets or whatever was stinging them, but before you could count to ten, all the Pigs were stung.

  It took a half-minute more for the sleep serum from the dart needles to stop the gang from wondering what stung them before they fell to the earth.

  When they woke up the Pigs were naked, each tied facing a tree. Feet spread and staked. Hands strung up high. Asses to the wind.

  The campsite looked exactly like it did before they got stung. Except for the pile of Pig clothes and a white wife-beater staked up on the truck of a pine tree.

  The words on the XXXL undershirt said, Watch Out For The Bares and were written with a black marker.

  Blood would have been more dramatic, but too messy and taken more time. It was enough to get nine limp overweight bodies tied to the trees and leave before the gang came to.

  CHAPTER 55

  “One for the books!” the TV female reporter said. “Sheriff Haskins from the city of Joseph who led the manhunt said the outlaws were found tied naked to these trees here in the Willamette forest, Kal.”

  Jack’s wall-screen TV flashed a photo of the nine naked Pigs. Then flashed back to the two reporters.

  “Well, they wound up in the wrong woods for sure, Krys,” said an old reporter who looked hung over. “You think maybe Clark Kent was camping up here?”

  “I like thinking it was Robin Hood, Kal, but whoever did it had a wicked sense of humor.”

  The TV cameraman panned from the Pig trees and reporters to the Watch Out For The Bares undershirt on the pine.

  “The nine gang members were found by Sheriff Haskins and his deputies at approximately 5 a.m. this morning, only hours ago. Stay tuned for more on-site reporting including an interview with the forest ranger who saw the bikers being handcuffed, and said they were bad news bares,” Krys said with a wink.

  Kal said, “You’re watching Kal and Krys on the Early Bird Show with the very latest breaking news on this amazing outlaw capture in the northern Oregon wilderness.”

  Jack, Oliver, Leon, Molly, and Will watched the early morning show display mug shots of the Pigs. They listened to the reporters talk about how the biker gang was found after a 911 phone call from an unidentified informant they assume was a camper at a phone booth by the parking lot entrance to the forest trailhead.

  “Don’t you think maybe it’s time to grow up, Jack?”

  Molly picked up the remote control and turned off the TV, got up from the big leather sofa, and tied an apron over her Cafe outfit.

  “And you know better, Oliver. Going along with Jack’s game was irresponsible and I don’t want to hear any Ed and Al only track together crap.”

  Oliver stayed seated on the sofa with Jack.

  Up on the bar, the ravens heard Molly mention their names, so Al stretched his wings and said to Ed, “Midnight.”

  Ed cawed back, “Dreary.”

  Then they both cawed, “Booo!”

  Oliver held back a smile. Jack couldn’t.

  “Birds are clever when you have a smart person working with them, but neither of you two qualify; that’s a fact!”

  Leon wasn’t sitting on the sofa like Will was in his bathrobe, he was standing by the open deck door and looked tired.

  He didn’t take long telling Oliver and Jack that if they did anything that stupid again, tracking and shooting armed killers with dart guns, they’d find themselves in sorry circumstances and could forget about being involved in security issues at the Nest or in town.

  Leon dropped Molly off at the bowling alley so she could open S2S. On the way they told each other how it was pretty special what the boys did, how you could capture criminals without a shootout and killing them.

  Before Molly got out of the cart, she and Leon set their pride aside and agreed that the criminals they were dealing with now knew there was someone other than cops onto their game.

  Wasps and hornets don’t tie you to trees and leave signs on shirts. Neither do Superman or Robin Hood. Real people did. So there was a good chance the criminals might want to find out who those real people were.

  Back at Ravens Rest in Jack’s living room, right after Leon and Molly left, Will said to Oliver and Jack, “You�
�re both outstanding young men.”

  Will got up from the sofa, rubbed his hands.

  “But here’s the deal. You don’t let me and Molly and Leon in on everything that goes down concerning your knowledge of Reimer Gore and his group before you take action on that data, then I’ll put Elfri on the bus. It won’t be easy her being so attached to Chip, but if I have to handcuff her, you can bet your lives we’ll be heading back to Texas.”

  Will headed for the kitchen.

  “Hope you understand. Nothing personal.”

  Elfri would have preferred to leave early for the Nest, the project was waiting for her, there were things to be done, but cutting herself a little slack now and then was a good thing. So when Leon asked if she’d keep Chip company while he visited his mom and pup at the cemetery, Elfri was good with it.

  She could get more work in on Dream Lovers, work a story out on the sexy dream she had yesterday that involved unreal massages by unattached hands, so Elfri sketched and wrote on the bench in a resting area between the people and the pet cemeteries that allowed her to keep an eye on Chip.

  Sometimes she’d pick up the walking stick that Packy the undertaker kept in a special slot at the end of the bench. It was dark hardwood and had the word EVERMORE carved in it.

  When Elfri mentioned it to Leon, he said that Packy was given the stick by a shaman he met somewhere in Arizona. It had been there for as long as he could remember, no one ever took it, just picked it up, handled it a little, then put the walking stick back knowing it was special.

  Chip was spending more time visiting with Timber since he started working on The Driller. He liked sharing his drawings with him. Would place them on his headstone that had Timber—Chip’s Best Pal carved on it.

  He would talk to Timber about things like pubic hair and dream circles.

  Timber loved to lick peanut butter off Chip’s finger when he was a puppy, so Chip brought a jar of Skippy, dipped his finger in and put a dab on Timber’s headstone and told Timber that sooner or later they’d get the man who killed him.