Impulse

by Steven Gould

  “Hyacinth hasn’t changed much,” said Millie. “She certainly kept her figure.”

  Davy shuddered and looked away from the screen. “I’m going to have that dream again, I bet.”

  Millie shut the laptop. “Should I let Becca know about the Rhiarti building? Or Costa Rica?”

  Davy frowned. “Well, I’m already blown in LA. Might as well let the feds know about the Daarkon Group. It could lead to something. Maybe they can find out where this Retreat is. Let’s reserve Costa Rica for now.”

  Millie nodded.

  “I’ll send her an e-mail.”

  THIRTY

  “Serious”

  I called Grant from my house.

  Mom and Dad were off doing something, which was a relief. If Mom had appeared right then, I would’ve spilled the entire story.

  “You were right,” I told Grant. “He took a bunch of his Mom’s Vicodin.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He’s in the ER. They’re going to pump his stomach.”

  “You got him to the hospital? Oh, thank you!”

  “Next time, call 911.”

  “I didn’t even know you drove!”

  “I don’t. As far as you’re concerned, you don’t know anything about how he got to the hospital, okay? You want to talk to people about the video, about the drugs, about Caffeine and the rest of those assholes? Feel free. Or not. Just leave me out of it!

  “I made sure he got there and made sure they had the information they needed to treat him. They don’t have my name and you’re not going to give it to them. You owe me that.”

  He sounded cowed. “Uh, okay. If that’s what you want.”

  “It is.” I thought about threatening him if he did, violence or spilling everything I knew, but that was too much like Caffeine. Besides, I wanted him to rat out Caffeine. What would it take? For Tony to die?

  “Okay. I do owe you. Tony definitely owes you. We all owe you.”

  And then he told me what was on the videos.

  * * *

  Grant sat with Tony’s family at the hospital and heard the family briefings. He gave me regular phone reports.

  An overdose of Vicodin can kill you two ways. The opiate part, the hydrocodone, can stop your breathing. The other part, the acetaminophen, can kill you through liver failure.

  So, the first thing the ER staff did was try to get rid of it.

  If Tony had been conscious they would have induced vomiting, since the drug wasn’t corrosive. Instead they did gastric lavage—pumped his stomach—but they got both. When the nasogastric tube hit the back of his throat during insertion, he did throw up, and they had a nasty stretch where they were using suction to make sure he didn’t inhale any of the vomit.

  They went ahead and completed the gastric lavage and gave him a dose of Acetadote, to protect his liver from the acetaminophen. His respiration improved after emptying his stomach, so they held off on using Narcan, to counteract the opiate effects of hydrocodone. Narcan has nasty side effects of its own.

  By late afternoon they were confident, barring other suicide attempts, that he would recover completely, with no liver damage.

  When Grant told me this, my eyes teared up and I had to sit down suddenly.

  The family wanted to know who had brought their son to the ER.

  The ER staff reported “he” was a stocky young man who was clearly very strong, wearing a motorcycle helmet, bundled up for the weather. The security camera confirmed that much, but there wasn’t a good shot of the person’s face.

  The family was distraught, irritated, and grateful, especially when their son woke up and confirmed that, yes, he’d taken the pills. Some mysterious stranger hadn’t forced them down his throat. And he was as mystified as anybody about who had brought him to the ER.

  When asked why he had taken the pills, he was less forthcoming.

  “Don’t know why they confused you for a guy,” Grant said.

  “What makes you think it was me?”

  “Uh, you said you did … didn’t you?”

  “Did I? How? I don’t drive. Have I ever been to Tony’s house? That you know of?”

  “You got someone else to do it? I thought—well, who was it?”

  “You don’t know.”

  “I know I don’t know! Who—”

  “You don’t know.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Oh. You don’t want me to know.”

  “I want you to be able to answer truthfully. If asked.”

  “I don’t know who brought him into the hospital.”

  “Right.”

  “And leave you out of it, too.”

  “Double right.”

  * * *

  I felt like curling up in my reading nook, buried in the cushions. I wanted to jump to Australia and throw myself into the surf. I wanted to do both of these things with Joe.

  I did not want to deal with Caffeine’s bullshit anymore.

  Before, I’d found her irritating. I’d expected something like her at school. Everything I’d ever read, both fiction and non, led me to expect queen bees and bullying and other stupid behavior in high school.

  Tony’s suicide attempt put it way over the edge, though.

  I waited two days to see if Tony or Dakota or Grant would go to the police. One cure for blackmail, after all, is making the subject public, to remove the threat of exposure by doing it yourself. But Tony hadn’t said anything by Tuesday after school. His family had him admitted to the psych ward for “observation.” Which meant suicide watch.

  His attempt was the talk of the school and, at first, it even seemed to shock Caffeine—she was pale on Monday. By Tuesday, though, she was back to her old nasty self. I guess she figured he wasn’t going to talk.

  After all, he was willing to kill himself rather than deal with exposure. Why should he talk now?

  I found myself shaking as I watched her laughing with her peeps, after school.

  Ah well, if you’re going to get mad, use it.

  * * *

  Start with a quart of corn syrup, add one-and-a-third cups of water, then start dripping the red food coloring in, stirring briskly. Don’t overdo it. Once it approaches blood in color, add a tiny bit of green or blue food coloring. Then thicken with chocolate syrup to taste, uh, I mean texture.

  It doesn’t smell or taste like blood, but it sure looks like it.

  * * *

  Three cars were parked beside the garage clubhouse, including Caffeine’s Honda.

  I set the plastic bucket of fake blood on the roof and went to the edge. I perched on the balustrade for a second, like a gargoyle, before leaping off and dropping seven feet onto the roof of Caffeine’s car. The roof crumpled a good half foot under the motorcycle boots, and I absorbed the shock by bending my knees. I was hoping for noise. I got it, too. The car alarm had a vibration sensor.

  I was back on the roof before the first of them came out the door—Calvin, followed by Caffeine. I guess she recognized the sound of her alarm. From above, I poured a cup of “blood” onto the snow behind Calvin. He didn’t hear it over the blaring of the alarm.

  Caffeine finally fumbled her keys out of her jacket pocket, but I dropped a lentil bag over Calvin’s head and jumped him away before the car alarm chirped and stopped.

  We appeared in the pit in West Texas, about twenty-feet above the water.

  I guess it’s a family tradition.

  There wasn’t cell phone reception there, even from the surrounding desert above. Down in the pit, there wasn’t any chance of a signal. And once you soaked the cell phone in water you didn’t have to worry about the GPS, either.

  I watched Calvin splash his way to the shore of the little island before I checked back on Caffeine and company.

  When I peeked over the broken wall of the ruin, Caffeine was staring down at the “blood” at the foot of the garage wall while Hector and Marius faced the surrounding lot.

  Hector had a gun.

  The gun was shaking.r />
  The blood looked great, but if they used their noses, it wouldn’t hold up. Better do something before they examine it closer.

  I picked up a half a cinder block, jumped to the roof, and threw it.

  Hector’s Toyota also had an alarm but, alas, not an unbreakable windshield. All three of them jerked and turned toward the car, spreading out.

  I poured another cup of the “blood” behind Hector. I didn’t have time to use the hood, but he still never saw me. He appeared in midair over the water and fired his gun reflexively. The noise echoing off of the pit’s walls made me flinch away to my reading nook with my head buried in the cushions.

  I checked back on him, cautiously, from the rim of the pit.

  He’d made it to the island, but Calvin had taken his gun away from him. I wonder if a ricochet had come uncomfortably close.

  All the cars were still at the clubhouse when I returned, but the door was shut. I jumped onto the roof, stomped around the skylight, and was rewarded with a muffled shriek from below.

  I got another cup of blood from the bucket and jumped to the garage closet with the camera. The closet door was slightly ajar.

  Marius and Caffeine were standing across the garage, opposite the outside door, halfway between the wall and the skylight. They didn’t see me—they were looking up at the skylight and the ceiling. I jumped behind them both and threw the cup of blood at the wall, then took Marius.

  Marius was fast, lashing out with one elbow and then the other. One of them hit the side of the helmet and the other glanced painfully off my goggles. When I let him go, I confess he may have been higher above the water than the others.

  Like twenty feet higher.

  “Oh SHIT!”

  I watched him hit the water, from the rim.

  Try and push me down a stairway!

  * * *

  Caffeine was trying to get her car door open but the distortion of the roof, from when I’d landed on it, had warped the door and bound the lock.

  I dropped a lentil bag over her head from behind and jumped her to the sandy wash in West Texas. She flailed, but I just shoved her forward. She went down on her hands and knees in the sand, gasping, then pulled the bag off of her head.

  As she scrambled to her feet, I backed off a few yards and crouched, one knee in the sand. I was wearing the entire ensemble: helmet, tinted goggles, balaclava, armor. Bulky. Faceless.

  When she finally turned enough to see me, she flinched, took a step back, and dove her hand into her pocket.

  Oops. Guess Hector wasn’t the only one packing.

  It was a small semiautomatic but new to her, I think, ’cause she was fumbling it. Before she turned it dangerous side out, I sprang upward and jumped in place, adding a hundred miles per hour straight up.

  Her head tilted up, her mouth wide. The gun hung limply at her side.

  When I was several hundred feet in the air and slowing, I jumped back down to the ground, but behind her. She twisted her head back and forth, scanning the sky. I raked the gun from her hand and shoved her, sending her stumbling forward.

  When she turned around, I was crouched again, watching her, the gun on the ground before me.

  She ran.

  * * *

  Caffeine’s keys were still in the Honda’s door lock. I pulled them out and used them to pop the trunk. Her backpack was there, with her laptop in it—the latest Apple product, probably bought with her drug money.

  The computer was in sleep mode and woke immediately when I opened it, but it was password protected.

  Hmph.

  I left the keys sticking out of the trunk lock.

  * * *

  I couldn’t see Caffeine when I returned to the wash, but when I shot high into the air and scanned, I spotted her a half mile down the wash, where it deepened to an arroyo. She was still moving briskly when she came around a bend and found me crouching in the middle of the gully, holding her computer.

  I used my raspy voice.

  “I warned you.”

  She stepped back, but I guess she’d realized there was no point in running.

  I took a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket and threw it toward her.

  She picked it up and unfolded it enough to identify it. It was the sign I’d glued to her jacket when she’d been lurking in the doorway opposite the coffee shop, the one that started with, Overuse of caffeine may lead to … and finished with, (Your Imaginary Friend).

  “Who are you?”

  “Your imaginary friend. Well, maybe not ‘friend.’”

  “Where are we?” Her gesture took in the gully and the sky and the surrounding desert.

  I ignored her and opened the computer, holding it so she could see the streaks of fake blood from my glove. “What’s your password?”

  She shook her head.

  I set the computer in the sand and stood up.

  “Do you really want to make me more angry?” I said. And I really was, which made the raspy, hoarse voice sound even scarier. “What is the password?”

  She took a step back, still shaking her head.

  This time, when I grabbed her from behind, I jumped in place, throwing us up into the sky at a modest seventy miles an hour.

  She screamed.

  I let go of her and she screamed louder. We drifted apart. Our upward velocity slowed to a stop 160 feet in the air and it felt like we hung there for an instant before the drop. The screaming intensified as we fell again. I jumped to close the gap, grabbing her around the waist, and jumped us back to the arroyo, spilling her into the sand.

  I returned to the computer while she shuddered on the ground.

  “Password?”

  She spelled it out. I had to make her repeat it twice before it was coherent enough for me to type it in.

  The account unlocked.

  The files were named Grant, Tony, and Dakota. I briefly scanned the beginning of the videos, confirming they were the right ones before I had to watch too much of them. I checked the file dates. “Where else are the videos?”

  She shook her head.

  I looked at her backup settings. There was a backup volume, and the last backup had been the previous evening. She also had a couple of network cloud storage accounts. I shot into the air again, with the computer, and, fifty feet up, jumped to New Prospect, by the library.

  When I connected to the library’s WiFi, I found the files there, too, in the cloud accounts. I deleted them and, to be sure, killed the accounts, which was only possible because she’d used the same password for the net accounts as she did for the computer.

  I returned to the wash. She was gone again.

  I sighed and checked from above. She’d left the wash and headed east across much rougher terrain.

  I put the computer in the cabin, in a desk drawer, then returned to the garage rooftop for the plastic bucket.

  It was child’s play to get in front of her, but this time I didn’t hang around and wait for her to arrive. Instead, she’d climb over a ridge or around a stand of lechuguilla, and find “blood” splashed across her path.

  She changed course and I did it again. And again. And again, until the bucket was empty.

  By then, she couldn’t even walk. She’d collapsed on a stretch of gravel, her torso held up by her elbows, her jacket tied around her waist. She was gasping.

  I walked loudly across the gravel, scuffing my boots, and Caffeine jerked her head around and stared at me, whites showing, like a deer in the headlights.

  “Where is the backup drive?”

  She looked at me like the words hadn’t made sense.

  I pointed up at the sky. “Do you want another ride?”

  “Uh, what did you ask?”

  “Where is the backup drive for your laptop?”

  “My bedroom desk.”

  “Which is your bedroom?”

  “The one at the back of the house. On the ground floor.”

  I shot up into the air and, from on high, jumped back to New Prospect. I kne
w where her house was from the school records, but I had to walk three blocks to reach it. Her drapes were open enough to determine the room was empty. I took the backup drive and two thumb drives from the desk drawer, putting them with the computer at the cabin.

  This time when I got back, she hadn’t moved.

  “Give me your phone.”

  “There’s no signal,” she said.

  I jumped the interval between us and she fell back onto the gravel. I held out my hand.

  She couldn’t give it to me fast enough. The videos were not on it, not that I could find, but I did a full factory data reset, wiping everything off the phone.

  “Why are you doing this?” She sounded like she was going to cry.

  I flipped the phone back to her once the wipe was done.

  “Feel a little nervous?” I asked.

  “What did I do to you?”

  “What did Tony do to you?”

  She winced, but then said bitterly, “He did everything he wanted.”

  I shook my head. “And then he did everything you wanted. And you recorded it. That part I’m pretty sure he didn’t want. Did Dakota and Grant?”

  She sneered. “That was nothing! You wanted them jumped in, instead?”

  I blinked. Jumped? “Jumped in?”

  “Beat in. Initiated. Beat to a pulp to prove themselves.”

  Ah. “Are you saying they wanted into your gang?”

  She looked away. “They wanted me. Same thing. And it was nothing like I had to put up with.”

  “Were you beat in?”

  She spit on the ground. “They don’t do that to girls. At least the little boys only had to do it with me. Not eight guys.”

  I felt like throwing up. I didn’t want to feel any sympathy for her.

  Eight guys?

  She’d seduced Tony, Grant, and Dakota individually, an attractive older girl, taking them back to the clubhouse and giving them the run of her body. Sure, embarrassing if recorded, even a bit humiliating. Boys were supposed to be like that, right? She’d let them, even encouraged them, to do everything to her, and secretly recorded it.

  Including the part at the end when she strapped on the dildo and did them in turn.

  Don’t get me wrong. It was consensual. Grant had been clear on that. She’d talked them into it. Experimentation with a sexy older woman. Yes, alcohol was involved. There was even a degree of enjoyment.