Pressure (Book 1): Fall

by Thomson, Jeff

  You will not beat me, she told the inanimate butterfly nut. And it wouldn’t. She knew this as well as she knew her own name. Her real name, not any of the half dozen or so she’d used over the years. Those women were not there, on that floor, under that table, in that motor home. Only she was, and Dani McGinty wasn’t going to give up - not now, not ever.

  The pain in her side stabbed at her like an icepick, cold and sharp, running from her armpit, directly to her shoulder blade. She shifted position, trying to ease the pain, trying to gain more leverage to beat this last damned nut. Another drop of blood fell toward her face and she jerked her head out of the way to avoid it.

  Something in the movement - a combination of shifting position, twisting at the nut and finally jerking her head to the side - did the trick. The nut moved. Not much, but not much was better than none at all. She repeated the move and it turned again. Then it stuck.

  She adjusted her grip, slick with the trickling blood, and tried again. Nothing. No movement. Had she fooled herself into believing the thing had moved at all? No. It had moved. Hadn’t it?

  A sob of frustration oozed from her lips like the blood oozing from her mangled fingers. She wanted to cry - to just curl up where she was and weep for all the bad that had happened to her in her entire life. Each tear would be one bad moment, rolling its way across her cheek to fall to the carpet, puddling beneath her head, gone. Give up, the welling tears seemed to say. Give up and surrender to your fate.

  No.

  No! No! NO!

  You will not give up. You will never give up. You will never take one more second of shit from that Animal – from any man, anywhere. Get angry, Dani. Get rip-shit pissed off for everything every man has ever done to you, from your Rat Bastard stepfather, to every John who thought it would be fun to slap you around a little, right up to the insane prick out there, somewhere, getting ready to come back and rape you again, and again, and again. Unleash your Inner-Bitch and fight, damn you!

  Danielle Irene McGinty, from Berwyn, Illinois, and the high school girl she had been the moment before the Rat Bastard put his first poke into her, and the runaway she became afterward, and the college student, and the sex-loving whore, and the recent rape victim, and the woman who had been running aimlessly, getting nowhere, her entire adult life, all took a fresh grip on the wings of the nut, grasped her right hand in her left, growled from deep within her soul and yanked.

  9

  In the Parking Lot

  Carvers, Nevada

  “You are such a shithead!” Mary growled from behind clenched teeth.

  “Is that any way to talk to your one true love?” As if to prove his affection, Dupree began dry humping her butt. “You still got a nice ass, baby.”

  That was his mother. That rat fuck son of a bitch was humping his mother, was squeezing her tit, was holding a gun to her ear. Jake tightened his grip on the revolver. Son of a bitch must die!

  The blood lust welled inside of him, coursing through his veins, no longer just white cells and red cells, no longer oxygenated water and proteins and nutrients, but red hot rage. “Let her go, asshole,” he said again.

  He wanted to pull the trigger, wanted to keep pulling the trigger, over and over again, until every round had been fired, and until Freddy Fucking Perdue lay dead in a pool of his own blood and tissue and bone and brains. And then he wanted to kick the corpse until it fell to pieces, until every bit of flesh had been turned into an unrecognizable puddle of goo.

  But his mother was there, between the gun and the asshole, between Jake and the man he wanted to kill, between life and death. He eased his pull on the trigger, willing himself to calm down, to breathe deep, to think. And then it came to him.

  “Mom,” he said, keeping his voice as even and quiet as he could, his eyes not leaving Perdue, . “What’s the advantage of being a midget?”

  For a moment, nothing happened. Both of them stared at Jake as if he’d suddenly lost his ever-loving mind. And then Mary smiled.

  “It means I’m closer to where it hurts.” And having said so, she reached down, grabbed Perdue’s crotch, and squeezed with all her might.

  There is nothing more debilitating to a man than testicular trauma. Any man, anywhere needs only the mere mention of a ball sack injury, and his reaction will be both predictable and immediate: he will wince, because once he’s had the experience, he will never forget it and will never, ever, want it again.

  A choking, girlish squeal escaped Perdue’s lips. His face instantly drained of color. His knees buckled.

  But he did not let go.

  “You BITCH!” He screamed. “You absolute fucking ball-kicking fucking bitch!” He yelled, tightening his grip and bringing the butt of the gun down onto her ear. He screamed in pain again and started firing wildly toward Jake, who dove behind the SUV.

  The bullets thunked against the metal sides of the truck and Jake heard Molly yip and scramble inside of it. He scrambled to the back end of the SUV and peaked around it, saw Perdue and his mother sideslipping along the front of the building, and fired. The round hit the building, several feet from either one of them.

  Perdue kept moving, kept dragging Mary sideways toward the motor home. If he made it there, if he managed to get to the side where the door was, then Jake would have to expose himself, would have to run from behind the cover of the SUV, would have to get shot.

  He was okay with that. He’d been shot before. It hurt like Hell, but he’d survived it once, and he would survive it again. Kill the motherfucker. Kill the motherfucker. KILL THE MOTHERFUCKER. The mantra of hatred sang though his brain like a chorus of bloodthirsty angels singing do-wa-diddy-diddy-dum-diddy-DIE.

  Purdue and Mary reached the edge of the building. The motor home lay just behind them, waiting, the Venetian-blinded back windows looking like two closed eyes.

  The rear end of the SUV sat parallel with the edge of the structure. Jake swung out and put a round into the motor home’s tail light, just inches above the Palin for President bumper-sticker. Perdue returned fire, shattering one of the SUV’s rear side windows. Jake could hear Molly whimpering inside.

  If you hurt that dog, I’m going to take a very long time killing you, he swore to himself. But it seemed an empty threat. Purdue had cover behind and to both sides of him. Any time Jake poked his head out, he’d get shot at, and one of those times, he’d probably get hit. And then his mother would be helpless.

  He looked through the sun-shaded rear window on his side of the truck, his view improved by the fact the other window had shattered. Perdue was trying to inch backward, but Mary - God love her - had a death grip on the corner of the building and she was not letting go.

  And then an odd thing appeared before his eyes. At first, he thought it was just an optical-illusion - a vision brought on by his wishful thinking, and stress, and rage. He blinked. No. It was real. The side door of the motor home had opened. And someone stepped out, looking for all the world like Carrie at the end of the prom.

  The setting sun shown from behind the vision, revealing wild hair, no pants, and a raised knife. Jake shook his head, trying to shake loose whatever phantasm his mind had conjured. Every climactic scene from every slasher movie, where the lone-surviving girl - torn, bedraggled, bloody, and utterly remorseless in her quest for revenge - vanquished the murderous psychopath, flashed before Jake’s eyes like something out of Roger Ebert’s worse nightmare of bad filmmaking.

  The vision crept - no, stalked - toward Perdue’s unsuspecting back, the knife arm fully extended above the apparition’s head, and with one quick lunge, drove it into that fucker’s body like John Henry wielding his hammer. Perdue’s eyes popped wide in shock, as his arms gripping Mary flew apart, releasing their grip. Her grip on the corner of the building held firm, though, and it and pulled her to the ground like a human slingshot. She smacked her head on the wall and fell into a heap.

  Jake was around the back of the SUV in a flash, the .357 held before him, ready to serve its fatal - a
nd only - purpose. But he still couldn’t pull the trigger. Whoever the woman was, whoever this avenging angel could be, stood directly behind the asshole. The .357 shell would rip right through Perdue and into her.

  As if sensing this, as if feeling the dread certainty of his own demise, of the end to his life as a psychotic asshole, Perdue dropped to his knees, still trying to raise the gun in his hand. He tried, and kept on trying, the strain evident in his eyes, but the gun just wouldn’t seem to come up. He looked confused, as if what had happened made no sense. His mouth worked, trying to form words, but only a strangled gurgle came out, along with a rivulet of blood.

  Jake walked up to him, looking only at him, concentrating only on where to put the coup de gras bullet. He paid no attention to his mother. He paid no attention to the mystery angel.

  Perdue looked at him, staring with wild, uncomprehending eyes, still trying and failing to raise his own weapon. Jake put the barrel against the top of his skull and fired.

  Again and again and again.

  Twelve

  “Human history becomes more and more

  a race between education and catastrophe.”

  H. G. Wells

  The Outline of History

  1

  Medford, Oregon

  “...Shots fired! Shots fired!” the radio clipped to Bobby Drummond’s hip, its microphone strapped to his left shoulder, crackled with the report. “Main and Sixteenth. All units respond, Code Two.”

  Main and Sixteenth lay just three blocks from where Bobby stood - once again - playing babysitter to the Reverend Fucking Jericho. He hadn’t heard the gunfire over the din of the crowd, but that didn’t matter. His patrol car sat blocked amidst all the other vehicles parked in and around the courthouse, but that didn’t matter, either. His orders were to stay with the Reverend at all times. They had come directly from The Major. That, especially didn’t matter.

  He took off at a run, pushing through the crowd at the edge of the park. It was a mob scene, even at the periphery, but the people there were mostly lookie-loos, trying to catch a glimpse of what all the fuss was about, rather than the true believers toward the center.

  Those people had him more than a little concerned, because they seemed a little too eager to swallow the Smite the Enemies of God Kool-Aid. From his experience in Iraq - for that matter, from his experience watching the news - he knew that any time you put religious fanaticism alongside the word or fact of weapons, what you had was a recipe for violence. Added to the crush of refugees, the dwindling resources they had to care for them, and the inability of the over-stretched law enforcement officers to control it all, and Bobby didn’t even want to think about it.

  So he ran, instead. Nothing he could do about it, anyhow - not at the moment. But he could do something about the report of shots fired: he could respond to it, and so he did. To Hell with The Major.

  The absolute cretin had done nothing to dispel or disprove Bobby’s first impression of racist moronity. The jackass had gone so far as to recommend that his officers exercise their batons on a few well-chosen skulls, just to “serve as an example to others.” And he’d made it clear just what color those skulls should be, without actually coming right out and saying it: calling them “Welfare Recipients,” instead of using the more obvious “N-Word.”

  Bobby had no intention of doing anything of the kind. But he had seen other officers at the Evening Roll Call, who might be more than willing.

  He’d seen racism before, of course, even in the Corps. Hard not to go there when so many different people, from so many different backgrounds, got jammed together in the rude awakening of boot camp. Competition hadn’t only been approved, it had been encouraged. But once through that nine-week trip into every teen-aged boy’s nightmare of discipline and the stripping away of individuality, the Corps had, for the most part, recognized only three colors: Desert-Camo, Jungle-Camo, and Dress Blue. Everything else had been Civilian Bullshit.

  Once through the crowd fringe, he picked up speed, controlling his breathing, conserving his energy for whatever lay ahead. Somewhere along the way, he’d gotten old. He hadn’t gone so far as to get fat, exactly. Compared to most people, he had no fat at all, but his body didn’t quite hum like it used to. Inevitable, he supposed at the back of his mind as he kept his legs pumping.

  Forty-four was old for a warhorse. Forty-four was old for a lot of things. And maybe he hadn’t kept up with the strict regimen of physical training he had while still in the military. And maybe he liked his beer a bit too much. And maybe the relative ease of civilian life had made him just a bit soft. Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .

  Didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All that did was getting to the scene of the action - to find out about the shooting, to respond to it, with lethal force, if necessary.

  He heard the gunfire now. He picked up speed.

  2

  The Parking Lot

  Carvers, Nevada

  The hammer clicked on an empty chamber. And again. And again. Finally, Jake stopped pulling the trigger. He didn’t need to anymore. Perdue’s head was gone.

  He stood there in the dust and wind and emptiness of Carvers, right smack in the middle of nowhere, Nevada. The gunshots echoed in his ringing ears. His pulse pounded inside his head. He closed his eyes.

  The blood lust floated there, just beneath the surface: a dark pool of rage and hatred and inhumanity. He wanted to swim in it, to backstroke his way through its thick warmth. He wanted to wallow in it, to drown in it, to be consumed by it.

  Get a fucking grip, Jake, that inner voice of reason said. He opened his eyes again and saw . . .

  “Dani?” he said, looking at the figure of the avenging angel.

  3

  Carvers, Nevada

  Dani stood there dumbfounded and pants-less. Jake, the man she had obsessed over - had, in fact left Las Vegas over - stood in front of her, gun in hand, after killing The Animal that raped her, and there she was without pants.

  She might have been embarrassed unto death, if not for all the other emotions swirling around in her battered, confused, and (dare she even admit it?) overjoyed head. In spite of the horrible circumstances that led her to this place, in spite of her pain and fatigue and shame, in spite of her fashion faux pax, what she felt most was happy.

  “Jake!” she cried, and lunged toward him, nearly tripping over the bloody remains of her rapist.

  He dropped the gun and stepped up to meet her lunge, sweeping her into his arms and hugging her tight. It felt wonderful. She pulled back from him, grabbed both sides of his face and began kissing it like mad, unmindful of her swollen lips, eyes and probably broken nose.

  Forget her misgivings, forget her confusion over the obsession she had with this man, forget her rule about never getting emotionally involved, and forget her damned walls. He was here. He saved her.

  This last thought gave her pause, and the crumbling edifice of her emotional barrier began rebuilding, brick by pain-hardened brick. If he had saved her - if she allowed the thought that she needed to be saved, that she needed to rely on anyone but herself, that she needed somebody, anybody other than Danielle McGinty - then the locked strongbox of her heart would snap open and she would be left utterly exposed.

  But he was here. She could feel him in her arms, feel his strong body, feel his hot breath on her cheek, taste the salty tang of his skin as she kissed him.

  She stopped kissing him and just hung on. Just for a moment. Just for a little while. Just give me this brief taste of happiness, Lord.

  A woman cleared her throat off to the right and behind Jake. He turned to look at her, and Dani saw an older, smaller and female version of him, sitting on the ground with her back against the building. She was looking at them with a bemused smile on her lips. A small cut and a larger bump sat on her head above her right eye, but those eyes were sparkling.

  Jake turned so that he faced the woman, but left his arm around Dani’s waist and his body covering her partial nudity.
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  “Mom,” he began. “I’d like you to meet Danielle McGinty.” He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Dani, this is my Mom.”

  “Uh-huh,” the woman replied, still smiling. But then her eyes glanced down at what lay at their feet, and her face lost its color.

  4

  Main Compound

  Yellowstone Volcano Observatory

  The black, sulphur-smelling night had a glowing border of red off to the southeast. Maggie, Rick Golatta, and Dr. Morgenstern stood beneath the eaves of the veranda in front of the Park Headquarters building, staring at it in silence. She felt a rumbling vibration below her feet. A loud hiss of escaping steam sounded nearby, in the direction of Mammoth Hot Springs.

  “There it goes again,” Dr. Morgenstern commented. Not that he needed to.

  “Third time in...” Rick checked the radium dial of his watch. “...twenty minutes.”

  “I’m scared,” Maggie said, in a voice so small, she couldn’t be sure the other two had heard it.

  “So am I,” Rick said.

  “Yep,” Dr. Morgenstern replied.

  They were trapped. The road north had been blocked by an avalanche, early that morning. The eruption at the geyser basin had left a large crater in the West Road, the last earthquake - a 6.2 - had cut the East Road, and to the south lay the ominous glow of The Monster.

  The FAA had declared a strict No-Fly Zone for a one hundred-mile radius around the park due to two vents - one at the Geyser Basin and one off the north end of Yellowstone Lake - that were spewing thick clouds of ash into the sky. Puffs of the stuff floated down onto the ground in front of them, covering everything in a gray film. The one and only Park Service helicopter had tried to take off, but the ash had gotten into the engine and it never left the ground. Its pilot was currently in the staff lounge with a bottle of tequila, getting slowly and thoroughly drunk. Maggie didn’t blame him one little bit.