good and ill together; our virtues would
be proud if our faults whipped them not;
and our crimes would despair if they
were not cherished by our own virtues.”
William Shakespeare
All’s Well That Ends Well
1
Interstate 80
Somewhere in Wyoming
The miles slid beneath the wheels of Charlie’s truck the way miles do: one at a time. Only in this case, they were miles in Wyoming, along I-80, which was interesting at the best of times, and absolutely fucking nerve-wracking in the winter. Wind gusts of up to forty-five miles an hour blew broadside from the northwest, spanking the seventy-three-foot long truck from side to side, taking most of Charlie’s concentration just to keep it in the lane.
The band of I-80 ran more or less parallel to the boundary it shared with Colorado and Utah, rising into the hills out of Nebraska on the eastern end and turning into table rock vistas to the west, looking like something straight out of a John Ford Western, and making it a sort of northern annex to Monument Valley. But in the middle, around Rawlins, still some ninety miles distant, it was as close to being a barren wasteland as it could get, without being an actual wasteland. Charlie had always thought the moon would look like that - if the moon suddenly became dotted with sagebrush and tumbleweeds.
The wind blew across the landscape with little to impede its progress. Forty-five mile an hour gusts were normal, fifty happened almost as often, and sixty was not unheard of. Many times he had run this route, and almost as many times, the side of the highway had been a veritable graveyard of mangled tractors and trailers and tourist motor homes tossed off the road because their loads had been too light and the wind had simply turned the trailers into so many big-ass kites.
Charlie didn’t need to worry about that, though. Both his specially designed and reinforced trailer, and the cargo it held were heavy enough to keep him on all eighteen wheels. That did not, however, stop Mother Nature from bitch-slapping him all over the road.
He was listening to a John D. McDonald, Travis McGee audio book. His brain could concentrate enough to follow along. It wasn’t that hard.
McGee was ass-deep in both trouble and women, as usual. The books always involved him being ass-deep in trouble and women, and Charlie found this reassuring; a changeless thing in an ever-changing universe. But like all books of a type, it was the way the story was told that made it entertaining, and spending hour after hour driving made entertainment essential.
He needed something to occupy his mind so as to avoid drooling on himself as he brainlessly drove off the side of the road, or something equally stupid. He’d seen it happen to other drivers, plenty of times. He’d nearly had it happen to himself, more than once.
He’d always been comfortable enough inside his own skull. Simply thinking could fill hours of road time, and he did it often. But spending too much time in one’s own head was, by definition, too much. He needed other distractions.
Music had always been a big part of his life, and he had a large and varied collection of CDs and audio files, but listening to it made it far too easy to zone out. Zoning out while traveling at sixty-five miles an hour in a seventy-five thousand-pound truck was a bad idea; thus, audio books. They were entertaining and kept his brain active enough to keep him from drooling, but passive enough that he could easily concentrate on more important things, like not getting blown off the road by a violent gust of wind.
He and the truck were headed toward Reno. They had a long way to go, and so he and McGee went west.
The CD reached its end, and he hit the eject button. A loud burst of static from the radio turned into the voice of a newsman.
“...The death toll in Fairbanks and Anchorage continues to mount, as aftershocks rumble through the region . . . ”
Sucks to be them, Charlie thought again. Glad it’s not me.
The Good Person inside him supposed he should feel guilty about this attitude, but he just couldn’t summon the emotion. Terrible things happened to people all the time. It had always been this way, of course, but the twenty-four-hour news cycle provided such a constant commentary on this, that, or the other Bad Thing, that the sheer volume of it simply overwhelmed the psyche, leaving little more than numb shock in its wake.
“...In a related story,” the newsman continued, “tremors, under the influence of what seismologists have called the Ripple Effect, have been felt more than two thousand miles from the stricken cities. In San Francisco, on the famed San Andreas Fault . . . ”
Charlie put the next CD into the stereo, cutting off the bad news.
2
Volcano Observatory
Yellowstone National Park
“The good news is,” began Dr. David Morgenstern, Acting Director of the Yellowstone Observatory. He was filling in for Harry Godstein, the actual Director, who at that moment was sunning himself and his new bride somewhere in the tanning oil-scented wilds of Tahiti. “The swarms have slackened, and we’re now reading seismic events approximately every other hour, instead of every few minutes”
At least we’ve got that going for us, Maggie thought. She stood off to one side of the conference room, along with all but those individuals physically working in the Seismic Center. Attendance at this particular meeting was mandatary. Not one person complained. Of course, most were sitting in the available chairs, leaving low-ranking peons like herself to shuffle from sore foot to sore foot as this meeting dragged into its second hour.
She liked Dr. Morgenstern, and it was hard not to. And no, it wasn’t because of his appearance: tall, handsome, with just the right amount of salt and pepper in his hair to make him distinguished, and bright, brown eyes that twinkled, as if he were about to tell a joke. What she really liked about him was his manner. He seemed to ease his way into everything. She’d had him as a Professor at Salt Lake before he’d moved onto the Assistant Directorship, and he had been one of her favorites.
She hadn’t gotten much sleep - any, truth be told - after the 6.3 earthquake this morning knocked her out of the chair and onto her backside. That one made her nervous. The data sent over from Trevor at Salt Lake about fifteen minutes later, scared the bejeezus out of her, and she didn’t like it one bit.
“The not-so good news,” Dr. Morgenstern continued, “is twofold: One; GPS data shows marked uplift on the north end of Yellowstone Lake. Twenty-three centimeters in the last twenty-four hours. Survey and flood data shows a corresponding expansion of the waterline on the southern shore.” A murmur skittered through the assembled crowd. He held up his hand to stem the flow.
“Don’t get carried away,” he cautioned. “It’s happened before. In fact, archeological data shows it happened periodically to the indigenous population over the course of approximately eleven thousand years. In and of itself, it doesn’t cause much concern. The second thing, however,” he paused, taking a deep breath that sent a not-so small shiver of fear along Maggie’s spine, “is not so good.”
To her admittedly exhausted mind, the man had just made a vast understatement. The scanning data they’d gotten had almost unnerved her, especially after she watched the color literally drain out of Dr. Galotta’s face. That had frightened her more than anything else.
“The 3D computer simulation from this morning shows that the magma chamber has essentially grown a finger.” He pressed a button on the remote and a PowerPoint picture appeared on the screen at the head of the conference table. It showed an amorphous blob, colored red, that everyone in the room immediately recognized as the massive magma chamber below their feet.
Dr. Morgenstern pressed the button again, and the same picture appeared, only this time, there was an offshoot pointing upwards and to the right from a spot roughly halfway between the center and right edge. The crowd gave a collective gasp. He pressed the button again and a map of the park appeared overlaid across the top of the frame. The picture slowly rotated in three dimensions, until it became clear
to everyone that the offshoot extended to a point directly beneath Yellowstone Lake.
He paused, scanning the faces in the crowd. He might have been doing it for dramatic effect, Maggie supposed, but she doubted it. He looked almost...scared.
“This is from about thirty minutes ago,” he said, clicking the Power Point remote. The same amorphous blob appeared on the screen, with the same finger pointing toward the lake. It looked to be the same image, but when he clicked the remote again and increased the zoom, there appeared several smaller fingers, all along the top of the magma chamber, making the blob look like a fledgling sea urchin, its spines just beginning to reach toward the surface.
3
Truck Stop
Rawlins, Wyoming
The electronic simulation of a ringing phone sounded in Charlie’s left ear. He seated the annoying earpiece in his right ear as he waited for the call to be answered. It soon was.
“Hello?” The male voice answered.
“Jake, you dumb drunk bastard!”
“Charlie?”
“Well it ain’t Ronald Reagan.”
“Thank God for that,” Jake replied. “It’s Hell talking to a dead guy.”
“What are you up to?”
“Oh, you know . . . Plotting world domination. The usual.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“Shitty. Same as always,” Jake replied. “What the Hell’s going on, Dude?”
“Living the dream.”
“What garden spot are you in today?”
“Rawlins, Wyoming,” Charlie said. “It’s twelve degrees out, with a forty mile-an-hour wind chill of minus-eight. Don’t you wish you were me right now?”
“I’m green with envy.”
This was the way their conversations always went: light, easy, and of no more substance than a Pop-Tart. They’d served together in the Coast Guard, more years ago than Charlie liked to consider, and became instant friends in the way shipmates sometimes do.
They had fallen into the simplest of all human relationships: a friendship between two heterosexual males. There were no pesky rules to muck things up, no expectations, no arbitrary roles to be played. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t seen each other in almost two years, or that Charlie had initiated four of the last five phone calls. There would be no offense intended or perceived if one forgot the other’s birthday. Asshole served as a term of endearment.
“How’s your mom?” Charlie asked. “Is she still a MILF?”
“I see you still have a death wish,” Jake said. “Good to see some things never change.”
After Charlie left the Polar Wind, they’d lost touch, of course. In the military, the top three lies were: the check is in the mail, of course I’ll respect you in the morning, and I’ll keep in touch. He’d made a lot of friends - good friends - during his time in service, and almost invariably, as soon as one or the other left their shared unit, the friend would fade into memory. Jake had been one of the very few exceptions.
They had run into each other again at the Pacific Area headquarters in Alameda, CA, as Jake was processing out and Charlie was attending some bullshit seminar on post-traumatic stress he’d been forced to take after an air crew died during one of his SAR cases. The reunion involved shocking amounts of alcohol, and at one point during the besotted evening, Jake had invited Charlie down to Vegas. It might have remained one of those I love you man, drunken moments, but three months later, Charlie had come to the end of his second enlistment, and, having nothing better to do, and no desire to remain in the military, he decided to take his friend up on the offer.
He’d gotten a job placing rebar on one of the projects Jake inspected, and the friendship resumed as if it hadn’t taken a three-year pause. The money had been good, and life had been good - until the economy imploded, and Charlie lost his job, along with thirty-thousand fellow-construction workers. Jake managed to keep his, because he’d had the good fortune to be on a multi-year municipal job at the time, but Charlie had been shit out of luck. And so he’d become a truck driver.
“What are you doing for Christmas?” Charlie asked.
“Going to my Uncle’s place in the cultural Mecca of Gunter’s Gap, Oregon. You?”
“Delivering a load in Reno, the day after,” he replied. “Nothing celebrates the birth of Jesus quite like a gun show.”
Five
“Demand money with the threat of violence
and you’ll get arrested.
Do it with the threat of eternal damnation
and it’s tax deductible.”
Steve Hofstetter
1
Church of the Eternal Savior
Boise, Idaho
Thomas Jericho, age 43, but looking ten years younger, gazed at his half-naked reflection in the full-length mirror and smiled. Perfect - well, nearly so. His body, while toned, still had a bit of a spare tire around his gut. Call it a bicycle tire. His professionally cropped short hair was beginning to show a bit of salt with his pepper. It looked rather distinguished, now that he thought about it, but he could also detect a hint of shadow beneath his grey eyes.
He glanced over his bare shoulder at the naked rump of the woman sleeping in his bed. Jezebel, he thought, happy with the Biblical reference. And a fine Jezebel she had been, indeed! He felt perfectly okay with that. She’d been rather enthusiastic, to say the least, showing her religious fervor in some highly creative ways, including one position that had her bent almost backwards. Their consultation, as he liked to call such encounters, had gone on for hours. Hence, the shadows.
Why had he chosen her last night? Let’s see . . . The service had been a good one, with plenty of donations for the coffers, praise Jesus, and the acolytes who’d requested a personal audience, and had passed the careful screening of his security (who ensured they were either incredibly wealthy or female or both) had been an interesting and eclectic mix. But why her, specifically?
She was devout, as were they all, and she had not objected when he “laid hands” on her, which was always nice. But it wasn’t as though she’d been spectacularly beautiful, or even the best looking of the bunch, so why her? Ah yes! Now he remembered.
She called him the Beacon of God.
He’d been searching for an appropriate title - one that suggested messiah without actually saying it, and that came pretty close. Beacon of God . . . Yes . . . He’d have to tell Crenshaw to work up a good promo before the next television broadcast: something tasteful, with someone else bestowing the title upon him. Always better that way, because he couldn’t be seen to promote himself. That would be asking for trouble.
There was a light tapping at the door. The man himself poked his head in, his news anchor good looks giving just the right degree of gravitas to make him the perfect Communications Director. Jericho had chosen him for those looks - that, and a certain moral flexibility.
“Mr. Crenshaw. Just the man I wanted to see.”
2
Boise, Idaho
Richard (Dick) Crenshaw, jr., age 29, escorted the Reverend’s latest tasty morsel to the Church’s rear entrance, opened the door for her, and walked her to her car, which sat about sixty feet from the building, in the middle of a large and all-but empty parking lot. This evening - and every weekday evening - the lot would be about two-thirds full, and on Sundays, it would be filled to bursting, but now it stood empty. An honest-to-God tumbleweed lazily skidded and bounced across the asphalt in the light breeze.
The woman’s name was Meredith Delaney. She was widowed, and she was wealthy. She had covered her dyed-blonde hair with a Paisley scarf to hide the fact that, although she had brushed it in the mirror of the Reverend’s room, it still sported that rumpled look of someone who’d just spent the night indulging in pleasures of the flesh. There was a colloquial expression for that look that Richard had always found delightful: freshly fucked.
“Reverend Jericho appreciates your support,” he said, as they reached her car. “As do we all.”
“You know, Mrs. Delaney, we do have the Mission to El Salvador coming up . . . ” He let the notification trail off, dropping the hint like a pebble into a still pool of clear water.
The Mission was - naturally - a scam. In a few weeks, he and one or two others would fly down, have their pictures taken with a bunch of pathetic, dirty, and hungry-looking children, and then they’d get the Hell out of there, fly to a decent resort on the Mexican Riviera, get a good tan, and enjoy a week of margaritas and senoritas, before returning to Boise with tales of all the Good Works being done. The money from contributions would head straight to a bank in the Caimans.
“Yes. Of course,” she said in a mildly distracted voice. “I’ll bring a check to the next sermon.”
“Seven-thirty tonight. Same as always,” he reminded her, although he knew that was unnecessary. She always attended - had always attended every sermon, six days a week, since shortly after her husband died, a year-and-a-half ago.
Crenshaw knew these things about her, knew every pertinent bit of information, as he did about all of their most generous parishioners. In fact, he may be the only one of the Inner Circle who did. The others generally couldn’t be bothered. But that was his job.
If his father could only see him now.
Richard Senior (or the Big Dick, as he often referred to the old bastard) was an Ivy League trust fund manager, with homes in Manhattan, Cape Cod, and the South of France. He was also a domineering asshole who’d cut off his son’s allowance years ago, in response to the party-boy lifestyle and repeated scandals involving either women or cocaine or (usually) both.
“You need to make something of yourself, Junior,” the tyrannical prick had said the last time they talked, seven years ago. “Until you do, you’ll not see another dime from me.”
Pressure (Book 1): Fall Page 5