Mean
R.K. Gleason
Contents
Other books by R.K. Gleason
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Copyright © 2019 R. K. Gleason
Print Edition ISBN-13: 978-1694377210
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Other books by R.K. Gleason
The True Death Series
The True Death
The Vengeful Death
The New Death
The Lonely Death
Death’s Return
Death Threats
Death Match
The Bitter Years Series
Savaged
The Fucked Series
UPPERCASE
Proper
Chapter One
Amy Palmer, formerly Amy Richter, sat on her back porch, smoking one cigarette after another and glaring at her cell phone. Her husband, Travis Palmer, sat across from her, checking his own phone from time to time. Their daughter Alexandria, who they called Al, was twelve years old and in her room. Travis split his attention between his phone, turning the stone-cold cup of coffee sitting on the small patio table between them, and the two large mounds of freshly turned soil in the far corner of the back yard.
When Amy’s father, Dave Richter, had phoned her earlier that morning and told her to shoot their dogs, Travis initially scoffed at the idea, assuming Dave had started drinking early that day. His disbelief lasted until Amy said her dad told her they were all in an uppercase situation. This was the family code word and it meant there was no time to fuck around or discuss things, it meant don’t ask questions, just do as you’re told. Travis knew this about his wife’s family and had never known Dave to use the expression before, other than to explain its importance. Dave had always been very fucking clear, you didn’t use uppercase carelessly, like to get someone’s attention or to make sure everyone had the Christmas lists put together. You only used it in case of extreme danger, when shit had hit the fan and members, or the entire family, could be in jeopardy and lives hung in the balance.
“That’s how this shit works,” Dave had told Travis years ago. “No time for fucking questions.”
Travis knew Amy had been raised this way and the two of them decided to do the same for Al.
“For some things,” Amy had told Al, just as soon as she was old enough to understand. “There isn’t any time to talk about it or take a vote. You just do what needs to be done.”
Travis now realized he’d never taken it as seriously as he probably should have. To him, it was more of a metaphor for the importance of family and honor, as corny as he always thought that sounded. But he felt like it was a good idea to instill this kind of mental discipline in his daughter at a young age, so he and Amy had engrained it into her. They’d talked about this often, in hypothetical discussions and what-if scenarios. But no one in the family, until this day, had actually called an uppercase fucked emergency.
Knowing all this, he was still shocked when his wife received the instructions from her father and set the phone down without disconnecting the call.
“Trav!” Amy said. “Take Al to her room. Dad says I have to kill Frankie and SoCo.”
“He wants you to what?” Travis had replied.
“He said I need to go shoot the dogs right now!” she repeated.
“You remember your dad drinks, a lot, right?” he’d reminded her.
“I know that, but he said we’re uppercase fucked.”
“Oh shit!” he said, feeling like he’d been punched in the gut. “Come on, Al!” Travis called to their daughter. “Let’s go play in your room. Mom’s going outside.”
Amy stood on shaky legs and moving robotically, retrieved the pistol from the gun safe in their room.
The four-legged family members Dave was referring to, were named SoCo and Frank. SoCo was short for Southern Comfort, which was what Travis and Amy had been drunk on the night the dog came to live with them. SoCo was a loving, female pit-mix. She was tiny when they got her, but now she topped out at just over eighty pounds of slobbering affection. Frankie was just a large, brown, male something. Maybe a Weimaraner or some mix. Travis and Amy had never figured out his exact breed. The dog was also a hound for affection, either from one of the two-legged creatures he lived with or SoCo, or from any stranger for that matter. SoCo wasn’t as fond of strangers as Frank was. She usually took her territorial cues from Travis and Amy when it came to strangers, and then amplified it to eleven. If Amy was hesitant to open the door to the knock of a door-to-door salesman or charity drive, SoCo would try to go through it to get to them. But if Amy opened the door wide, the dog would stick to her hip like glue and look menacing.
Despite this difference, the two dogs were inseparable, unless SoCo’d had enough of Frank’s company, or Frank was sleeping in her spot on the couch. She would stand above him and let out a low, almost inaudible growl followed with a curt snort. It wasn’t threatening or scary, given Frank’s customary reaction. It was more like she was saying, hey buddy… you’re in my spot, but SoCo was too cool to do it with a yip or a nudge. And she definitely wasn’t going to share. It usually didn’t take more than a couple of these polite notifications and Frank would move. But if SoCo was getting some attention from anyone, Frank was squirming around to get his share, or at least the cast-offs. Despite the dogs’ gender roles, everyone who knew the good-natured mutts, knew Frank was SoCo’s bitch. He was the little spoon to her top.
“What’s Mom doing out there?” Al had asked.
“Listen, Al,” Travis began as he sat down next to her and gave her a hug. But before he could answer his daughter, they heard four gunshots being fired. Al released a startled scream and wrapped her arms around Travis, a look of panic and fear stretched across her expression. He hugged her, assuring Al everything was okay and they were safe, hoping it wasn’t a lie. A few seconds later, Amy came inside and went straight to her phone.
“Do you want to tell me now why I just shot your granddaughter’s dogs?” she asked Dave.
“What?” Al screamed, pulling away from Travis and running out the open door.
“Goddamn it, Dad!” Amy shouted into the phone. “You have been drinking!”
Travis got up to go console their daughter when Amy caught him by the wrist.
“They never answer their phones,” Amy said into the phone. “Did you try texting them? That’s what I do.”
Travis had watched Amy’s expression settle on confusion when she said, “All of us? Are you and Pam coming out to Seattle?”
Dave spoke for another moment while Amy listened intently.
“Okay. Tell everyone we love them, stay safe and call me,” Amy said pausing and then added, “I love you too, Dad,” before hanging up the phone as Frank and SoCo lay dead in the grass. Or at least that’s what Amy let her father believe.
“Still nothing?” Travis asked Amy, looking again at the spot they planned for the garden he’d started preparing that morning. It’d taken him a couple hours getting the ground dug up and ready. The timbers he planned to use for the borders were piled next to the upturned soil and he’d intended to get a load of topsoil that afternoon to fill it. But it seemed that project might be on hold for the moment.
“What do you think?” Amy replied, still glaring at her phone, letting her hand drop from her lap to scratch behind SoCo’s ear. Without missing a beat, Fra
nk whimpers against Amy’s leg, demanding an equal amount of attention from her other hand. “They should have at least sent a text by now!”
“I really thought you were going to shoot the dogs.”
“As much as I love my dad, I’m not just going to kill Frank and SoCo because he said so,” she answers, reaching down to grab Frank’s chewed up tennis ball and tossing it into the yard. The dog lunges after it, his claws scrambling across the wooden planks of the deck and leaping to the grass. The ball stops rolling, and Frank nearly does a backflip to try and snatch it up in his jaws as he runs past. Missing his target completely, Frank tumbles, stops and gingerly picks up the toy, trotting back to drop the ball at Amy’s feet so she’ll toss it again.
Chapter Two
They’d left the freeway an hour ago and drove along mostly deserted backroads, paralleling highway two-twenty-four but keeping a mile or two between the cars. Mike had been the first to suggest it, just so they could make better time with less traffic. They’d end up at lower than highway speeds, but at least they’d be moving faster than the speed they’d been crawling at. It’d been pointless trying to drive to the state line and then possibly sneaking across with the hundreds of other drivers attempting the same thing. There were so few cars heading back toward where they’d come from, the lanes intended for eastbound traffic had been adopted by the westbound drivers. The rest of the family agreed, chiming in on the walkie-talkies they were using to communicate between cars as they drove.
Dave and Pam had to occasionally shout over the wind rushing in through the broken back window, curtesy of their son’s quick thinking. Twice, Pam had to hold the little speaker inside the device, pressed against her ear to make out what was being said, and by who. This is why Joe was sitting directly next to the absent pane of glass as they drove. They’d grabbed an unused, light jacket and closed in the top of the door above the open window, trying to block some of the airflow, but it did little good. Joe was forced to hold it down tightly at the bottom with both hands to keep it from smacking him in the face from time to time. Dave couldn’t help smirking when Joe tried to pin the bottom of the windbreaker to the armrest with his thigh, intending to give his cramping fingers a break. It took about five seconds for a gust of air to jerk it free and start lashing him across the face again. It wasn’t hard enough to draw blood, or even leave a mark, but it was entertaining to see him swatting blindly at the thing while it slapped him in the face from every direction. But what was amusing then was losing its humor as the temp in the car continued to drop, no matter how high they cranked the heater. Dave glanced in his mirror again and saw Joe shivering as the wind blew hard enough to tussle his hair.
“Does anyone know how to hot-wire a car?” Dave asks into the walkie-talkie.
After a second or two of dead air between the three cars, Brigette answers, “Zack says he can probably do it. Over.”
Dave pauses for a second, considering this information and then asks, “He knows how to in principle, or he’s done it before? Over.”
“He says he knows how,” she replies and then clicks back on to add, “In principle. Over.”
Dave knew the principle behind hot-wiring a car. The idea was to bypass the ignition switch by wiring the power directly to the starter and he’d watched his oldest brother do it when Dave was twelve. His brother had done it by taking a long wire and just running it from the battery to the starter, and presto, the car started. But that was forty years ago on a ’68 Pontiac. Long before locking steering wheels and anti-theft technology and Dave didn’t think the simple wiring job would work on today’s cars.
“So then, it’s a shaky maybe,” Dave replies into the mic. “I think we can write off finding an abandoned car and trying to hot-wire it. First off, it’s probably been abandoned for a reason. We could waste all kinds of time trying to steal a car that won’t even run. And even if it does run, I’m sure hot-wiring a car isn’t as easy as they make it look in the movies. Over.”
“Right,” Pam interjects. “They just yank a bunch of wires from under the dash and always know the exact ones to cut and twist together.”
“If it’s a car chase kind of movie. But if it’s a horror movie and they’re being chased by an ax murderer or something, then it comes down to the last second,” Joe says, pulling the collar up on his jacket to shield his face from the cold wind gusting through his broken window.
“Or a zombie horde,” Pam says quietly, so only Dave can hear. “And then everyone usually gets eaten.”
“Hot wiring’s out. Over,” Dave says into the walkie-talkie.
“Then what do you want to do? Over,” Brigette asks.
“We could always just park at a gas station and wait for someone to fill up their tank,” Mike offers, joining the conversation from inside his Mercedes with Lynn and Ben.
“And then what? And you didn’t say over. Over,” says Dave.
“I guess we wait for the right one to show up and just take it,” Mike replies.
“That’s sort of hardcore, Mike,” Dave replies.
“Desperate times,” Mike answers, not bothering to finish the cliché or say over when he was through.
“Maybe. But I’m not in love with the idea of waiting around and hoping the right vehicle falls in our laps,” Dave says, glancing at the gas gauge that shows just under a quarter tank and then toward the sun that would be setting within the hour. “And what happens if the occupants of the car don’t want to just give it up? Over.”
“We’ve got guns, Dave,” Mike answers.
“And what happens if they have more guns?” Dave says, dropping the radio protocol. “I don’t think any of us are ready for a firefight over a car at a gas station. Too many things could go wrong.”
“Ben says we could park a couple hundred yards away, with a clear view and with a little luck, he might be able to pick them off with his rifle,” Mike says.
“Jesus Christ!” Dave says. “We’re not going to be those fucking guys. We’re not going to be the ones that steal a car at gunpoint or kill for it. At least not yet and not like that! We’re not going to murder someone who’s just trying to get the fuck out of town. Just like we’re trying to do. Over!”
There’s a long moment of silence over the radio before Pam says to Dave, “I’m thinking car lot. It’s an obvious choice. There’s no waiting around for the right opportunity and we’re not taking away somebody’s chance to make it out of here. We’re just taking a car. Sort of, without permission.”
“It’s exactly without their permission,” Joe says.
“With all this shit happening,” Pam continues. “I doubt any car salesman is hanging out at the office, hoping for one more big sale before knocking off for the apocalypse.”
“Apocalypse?” Dakota says in surprise.
“Let’s call it what it is,” Pam tells him. “What I’m saying is, the odds of someone putting up a fight to stop us are pretty slim. I’m not suggesting it’s going to be easy, but at least we can shop around for the one we need, not settle for the one that happens along, and no one gets hurt.”
“Probably no one gets hurt,” Dave interjects.
“Right,” Pam concedes with a nod. “Probably no one gets hurt. But the odds of getting through it unscathed are in our favor.”
“You might be right,” Dave says. “I think most of the cars are probably gassed up and ready to go. And if not, most of the big lots have their own fuel tank for filling cars, rather than taking them to a gas station.”
“Exactly,” Pam says. “All we have to do is go in, find the keys and pick a car.”
“How do we match the keys to the cars?” Dakota asks.
“Almost every one made comes with keyless door locks and emergency alarms. All we have to do is start pushing buttons on the key fobs until one of the cars goes off,” Pam answers. “We can narrow the search by sticking to a specific make. How does a new Jeep sound?” she asks her husband.
“That’d be cool,” he admits. “Big
fuel tanks, four-wheel drive and if we stay away from the Wranglers, we can get one with plenty of room.”
“What if they keep the keys locked up?” Dakota asks.
“One fucking problem at a time,” Dave says a second before thumbing the mic on the walkie-talkie. “We’ve got an idea,” Dave begins.
“We?” Pam says.
“Correction,” Dave says. “Pam’s got an idea.”
“Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it soon,” Joe adds from the backseat. “It’s freezing back here!”
“No shit?” Dave blurts, handing Pam the walkie-talkie and glaring into the rearview mirror at Joe. “Did you try rolling the window up? Oh! That’s right. I forgot!”
“I panicked! Okay?” Joe replies.
“Well shit, Joe!” Dave says. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking, we need to get the heck out of there,” Joe answers. “Besides. Mom’s the one who locked the keys in the car in the first place!”
“He’s got a point,” Dakota chimes in.
“I know,” Dave says, glancing at Pam in the passenger seat.
“Don’t drag me into this,” Pam says. “This isn’t about me.”
“We wouldn’t need to get another car if either of you would’ve thought for a second before just going off half-cocked,” Dave says.
“Well, now that we’re all fully cocked, let’s focus our attention on finding a car lot and getting another car,” Pam says.
“Are you guys still there? Over,” Brigette asks over the radio.
“Yeah, we’re still here. We were just working out some of the details,” Pam replies, staring at Dave to let him know the previous conversation was over.
The F*cked Series (Book 3): Mean Page 1