Pressure (Book 1): Fall

by Thomson, Jeff

  Truck Stop

  Tooele, Utah

  Charlie crawled out of the sleeper and plopped himself into the driver’s seat, feeling stiff and sore and hungry and badly in need of coffee. Today’s tee-shirt (black, of course – they were all black) featured the words, Demented Avenger. They were derived from his favorite line of rock lyrics: “Bleating and babbling, we fell on his neck with a scream; Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream,” and came from the Pink Floyd song, Sheep, penned by Roger Waters.

  He rubbed his eyes and looked through the windshield at an absolute cluster fuck. He rubbed his eyes and checked again. Yep. Still a cluster fuck.

  Trucks were parked every which way, and it was anybody’s guess how anybody was going to get out of there any time soon. Between all the people who’d parked there before the quake and all those who had come east from Nevada and toward Salt Lake, but found their way blocked, there must have been two hundred trucks in a lot designed for two-thirds that many. And all of them were in Charlie’s way.

  “Wonderful,” he mumbled aloud. “Just fucking ducky,” and so saying, he shrugged into his jacket, grabbed his travel mug, and headed for the coffee, hoping there would actually be some.

  The power had gone out immediately after the quake. He’d headed into the store just as they were trying to shoo everybody out. He’d slipped inside when the employee at the door had gotten distracted by some asshole who’d been trying to walk out with an armload of stuff he hadn’t paid for. It had looked to Charlie like there were three or four others trying to do exactly the same thing.

  He’d walked right up to the counter and waved a ten-spot at the cashier before she could tell him to go away. “Look,” he’d said. “I know you gotta kick everybody out of here, but I’m hungry and I’ve got money. You’ve got a bunch of food that’s going to go to waste.” He put the bill down onto the counter and continued, not giving her a chance to interrupt. “Just toss me a couple burgers and we’ll call it good.”

  She’d looked at him for a moment, then glanced around and spotted the woman who was clearly the manager, since she’d joined the scrum at the door and was trying to direct traffic and help her employee stop the thievery. Seeing her distracted, the cashier reached into the case, pulled out two plastic-wrapped cheeseburgers, and handed them to Charlie.

  “Keep your money,” she’d said with a wink. “The manager’s a bitch, anyway.”

  “Thanks,” he’d told her.

  “Bon Appetite!”

  So it had gone well, but that had been last night. They’d gotten power back three hours later, and the lights in the lot and through the store windows told him they still had it, but with all these people here, and with the truck stop more or less cut off from its supply chain in Salt Lake, who knew if the coffee had run out? Deciding this was far too frightening to contemplate, and grasping with his sleep-addled brain the notion that even if it had, he certainly couldn’t do anything about it, he steeled himself for the worst and headed inside.

  The Gods, and Juan Valdez, patron saint of coffee-addicts, smiled upon him.

  2

  Trauma Ward

  Boise Central Hospital

  God has a mission for you, Thomas. You have been Chosen. You shall be His Beacon. You shall venture into the hinterland, and you shall spread The Word. He has laid waste to this world of sin, and He is sending you out to scour the people as He has scoured the land.

  You must go West.

  You must go now.

  You must evacuate.

  Evacuate

  Evacuate

  “...now we’re being told to evacuate.”

  “But what about the Reverend?”

  “I’ve arranged for a medical flight. One of those corporate jets, with a medical staff. They do it all the time.”

  “But he’s not supposed to be moved. The doctor said. He has a brain injury. The altitude could kill him.”

  “Yes, and the Governor of Idaho said we have to evacuate. The roads are jammed with cars. If we don’t go by air, we don’t go.”

  Light. Dim, suffused light.

  Pain. Awareness of pain.

  Silhouettes. Two men. Standing . . . where? Foot of the bed.

  Bed. He was in bed.

  Beeping. Machines beeping. Hospital?

  “But where will we go?”

  “Quit whining. I need you to go to the roof and commandeer the medevac helicopter. Beg, borrow, steal, bribe. I don’t care, just do it.”

  “But where . . . Wait . . . Did he just blink?”

  Thomas opened his eyes. Crenshaw stood there at the foot of the bed with Bourassa, his head of security.

  “Reverend,” Bourassa said, his craggy, sunbaked face a mask of concern, and circumspection, as he looked toward the hallway to see if anyone could hear. Crenshaw joined him at Jericho’s bedside. The security chief grabbed the man by the shoulder and shoved him toward the door. “Move. Do what I told you. We need to go.”

  “West.” Thomas Jericho said. “We need to go West.”

  3

  Park Operations Compound

  Yellowstone National Park

  “The North highway is blocked, so head out the West Gate,” Dr. Galotta told the driver of the bus as Maggie started to board. US 89, the road the last batch of evacuees had taken the previous evening, had been buried under an avalanche, just shy of twelve miles north of the Park headquarters. The odds of it being cleared any time soon (or ever) were virtually nonexistent. “Into the prevailing winds.”

  She paused, halfway through the telescoping door. “Aren’t you coming?”

  He looked at her for a moment, his expression grave, but then he smiled. “Nope. Somebody’s gotta watch The Monster.”

  “Then I’m staying, too.” She started to come back off the bus, but he stopped her with a hand, right on her blue jean-clad butt. His fingers slid down to the cleft between her right cheek and the top of her inner thigh and squeezed, gently – more of a caress than a goose, a wistful smile on his face.

  And then the hand reared back and gave her a resounding smack on the ass. “No,” he said, and shoved her onto the bus. Slapping the metal side twice, he told the driver, “Move. Get this thing out of here.” And the driver complied.

  With a gear-grinding lurch, the bus took off. Maggie staggered down the aisle to the only remaining seat: all the way in the back, next to Dr. Shintake. The geologist smiled at her, his composure, along with his neatly-groomed black hair and immaculate clothing looking as if he were headed out to a movie, instead of evacuating a catastrophic eruption. She returned the smile, but felt none of its warmth. Then she turned and watched out the rear window as they rounded a curve and Dr. Rick Galotta, with his octopus hands, and the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory building, which she had worked so hard and so long to get to, disappeared from sight.

  4

  Police Headquarters Building

  Medford, Oregon

  “I see you were a Marine,” Medford’s Chief of Police, Jerome Nesbit said to Bobby Drummond, flipping through a file on his otherwise pristine desk. They were in the Chief’s office. A “Me-Wall” of photos sat behind the man sitting behind the desk. “And a Gunnery Sergeant.”

  He was a reasonably slim man, but it didn’t seem to Bobby like there was much substance to the slimness. He looked soft. The man’s face held an unnatural tan, given that this was Oregon and winter, and not Waikiki Beach, where that shade of brown would appear less suspect. “That’s good. That’s good,” he continued, nodding his weak chin. “You’ll feel right at home here.” He slapped the file closed and gave Bobby a self-satisfied smile. “I, myself, am a Major in the Army National Guard,” he added. A photo of the man in uniform sat prominently behind him, next to one where he was shaking hands with President George W. Bush.

  That photo alone spoke volumes. Bobby considered himself so far right, he made Fox News commentator Sean Hannity look like a liberal pussy, but after the absolute
cluster fuck of Katrina, Bobby’s opinion of “Dubya” was lower than slug shit.

  Still, not everybody got their picture taken with POTUS, so he might have passed it off as bragging rights, if not for what Gregg Conelly, the Duty Officer he’d checked in with during the previous night’s chaos, had told him about The Major.

  “That’s what he likes us to call him,” he’d said with obvious derision. “A major ass is more like it. But, he’s the Mayor’s brother and a political appointee, rather than an elected official, so we’re stuck with him.” Such open disrespect in front of a new hire had seemed at the time to be, at best, bad form, and at worst, a serious breakdown in discipline. But Bobby had taken it all in silence as he signed his paperwork, took the oath and received his uniform, badge, and sidearm.

  Best to wait and see, he’d thought. And so he had.

  Last night had been a whirlwind of activity, with downed power lines, traffic lights out, three structure fires, multiple, but mostly minor injuries, and one incident at a hardware store that had looked like looting at first, but turned out to be a simple case of a disgruntled employee taking advantage of the earthquake.

  “Conelly tells me you handled yourself well during last night’s racial incident.” He said the word racial as if it somehow disgusted him. The employee in question had been black. So had the store owner, but this fact seemed to escape The Major.

  The man’s racial bent had also been explained by Officer Conelly. Apparently, the Chief had been, until late last year, a married man. His wife, it seemed, had left him - for a black woman. The divorce had become final less than a month ago. She’d taken him to the proverbial cleaners.

  Bobby said nothing, just remained standing, ramrod straight, at parade rest, legs eighteen inches apart, the knuckles of one hand resting in the palm of the other at the small of his back. He thought moron, but kept the notion to himself. He’d arrested, and had just finished booking the man, when he’d been called in to meet The Major.

  “Did the Nigerian give you any trouble?”

  “Nigerian, sir?” Bobby asked. The man had spoken perfect English.

  “The Afri-can Ameri-can,” he replied, with unnecessary emphasis. “The colored boy you arrested. Did he give you any trouble?”

  “No sir,” Bobby replied, mentally adding racist to moron. He was tired, having been up and working all night, and his new boss wasn’t helping the low-grade migraine he felt developing behind his ears.

  “Didn’t put up a fight?” The Major seemed disappointed.

  “No sir.” The guilty party had been easy enough to find, since he’d gone straight from his bit of vandalism to the bar directly across the street, which, Bobby discovered, was where he’d started.

  Apparently, the man, whose name was Randolph Gardener, had been drowning his sorrows after being fired, just that afternoon. The earthquake had given him the opportunity for a little revenge. He’d taken advantage of it (and a conveniently-placed trash can), and then had gone right back to getting placidly and thoroughly shitfaced. Quite reasonable, from a certain perspective.

  And reasonable is what he’d been the moment Bobby (now wearing a dark blue Medford City Police uniform) walked into the bar. The man had simply gotten up from his bar stool, turned his back and presented his hands to be cuffed.

  Now he sleeping it off in the lockup on the third floor. This was all the guy was going to end up doing, Bobby figured, because he doubted a judge would do more than assess a fine, especially with all the rest of the chaos going on. But that wasn’t Bobby’s call.

  “Too bad,” The Major replied. “Too bad. Didn’t resist at all?”

  “No sir.”

  Bobby had worked for some real winners over the years, both in and out of the Corps, but this Nimrod had gone straight to the top-ten list of real geniuses. Here they were in the middle of a disaster of truly historical proportions, and The Major’s primary focus appeared to be on a nothing case of minor property damage. He acted more concerned with being able to justify racial skull-cracking, than dealing with the real problem, which was making sure they could make it through the next few days.

  Granted, Medford seemed to have dodged the worst of it, if the reports they’d been receiving from other cities were to be believed. But that fact alone said they were essentially cut off and on their own, at least near-term. At the very least, they wouldn’t be getting any outside help any time soon. The Chief of Police’s primary focus should have been on making sure they could weather the coming storm, because if they were in better shape than the rest of nearby Oregon, then all those people, from all those places, would soon be heading to Medford. If they didn’t know whether or not they had the resources to subsist on their own until whenever help arrived, how could they possibly know whether or not they could absorb the refugees that were sure to be coming their way?

  “Well, shit,” Chief Nesbit said with a sigh. “Probably for the best. The last goddamned thing I need is the ACLU crawling up my ass.”

  There wouldn’t be any room for the ACLU, Bobby thought. It’s already filled with your head. What he actually said was, “Yes sir.”

  The Major nodded his nonexistent chin again. “Carry on, Marine. Don’t just stand there taking up space. Go out and maintain order.”

  Bobby nodded and exited without saying another word. There were, however, several words floating through his head. Some of which expressed the idea that coming to Medford might have been a mistake.

  5

  No Name Gravel Road

  27 miles North of Tonopah, Nevada

  The Animal thrust inside her, grunting as he pounded away. He had Dani bent over what served as a dinner table inside the motor home, her hands tied underneath it, her jeans and underwear down at her ankles, her backside in the air. A gag filled her mouth, but she knew better than to scream – knew better than to feel anything at all.

  He had come upon her at the repair shop, just a lost motorist looking for directions; a quiet, unassuming, unthreatening soul, right up until he’d stuck the gun in her face. Why hadn’t she seen it? Why hadn’t her normally good senses sent up warning flags and rockets? They had kept her safe for a very long time, but failed her when she needed them most. Story of her life.

  And now he was fucking her. Raping, she supposed, would be more accurate. But then again, how do you rape a whore?

  “You’re mine now, bitch,” he’d said, his face an inch from her own, his breath hot and sour, the hand not holding the gun squeezing her tit, braless beneath her tee-shirt, using it to pull her toward the motor home.

  And then somebody had seen them.

  6

  North of Tonopah

  Freddy Perdue was right where he wanted to be. He had the bitch, had her good and proper. And what a fine piece of ass she was! Her nipple pointed into his palm like an arrow, warm and inviting. She wanted him.

  And of course she did. They all wanted him. They always had. Even his wife.

  Ex-wife, he mused, dragging his latest slut toward the waiting motor home, the bedroom on wheels, his new fuck-palace. She had liked to fuck. Hell yeah, she did! She had been most enthusiastic - right up until it all went bad.

  She was a nurse back then. Probably still was. He’d called her his Angel of Mercy. She’d been that, too - until they were alone. Then she turned into his whore. What that women used to do with her mouth! And her pussy? Pure golden chalice. His cock got hard just thinking about it.

  Maybe he should pay her a visit. Just for old time’s sake.

  Something about the idea didn’t sit right. Something about the Air Force...

  This new slut looked as if her pussy would be pure gold, too. And her ass! He could hardly wait to jam it up inside her. And she would want it, would beg for it, would scream. They all did.

  His wife had loved it up the ass. Of course, she only acted that way the first time, had begged for him to fuck her that special way, had waved her ass right in his face, right up until he rammed it home. Then she had scre
amed. After that, she always acted as if she didn’t want it, said it hurt, said he was too rough, but he had known. She wanted it. They all want it. And he’d given it to her every chance he could. And if sometimes he’d needed to smack her around to give her what she really wanted, well, that was just the nature of things.

  But then had come the calls from the Provost Marshall, and the counselors, and the restraining order. That stupid fucking bitch had called his C. O., and the Air Force had told him he couldn’t see her anymore. After all he’d done for them, after all the years dealing with their secrets, after all the work he’d done to perfect their drones. What had been his reward? For them to step in and tell him how he could treat his own wife

  There it was! That was the reason he couldn’t stop in for a fuck to celebrate the good times. The good times had ben bad. The good times had come to an abrupt end, and she was the reason. Maybe he should see her, anyway. Maybe he should bring her inside his new fuck palace...

  So what if he’d reacted badly to it all? Of course he had! What right did the fucking Air Force have to control his life? And okay, maybe he shouldn’t have beaten the shit out of the Provost Marshall. He definitely shouldn’t have used a baseball bat on the guy. But did they have to lock him up in an asylum for it?

  Security risk is what they’d called him. Fucking lunatic is how they’d treated him. But all that was over.

  They reached the motor home and he let go of the new slut’s tit. The gun he kept jammed right into her throat as he fumbled for the door.

  And then from nowhere, some asshole had shouted: “Hey! Stop!”

  7

  Inside the Motor Home

  North of Tonopah, Nevada

  “Hey! Stop!” the voice had shouted from somewhere to her left. She’d tried to look, tried to see, but the Animal had slammed her head into the side of the motor home, then dragged her inside.

  She’d still been conscious, then - down, but far from out. She’d struggled to stand, hoping for a chance to flee or fight, but then he’d clipped her head with the butt of his gun and all had gone black.