He was twenty-five, with a cool car, a leather jacket, long hair, and (from what Jake understood) pretty good dance moves, and exactly one thing on his mind. As soon as she gave it to him, he headed for the hills, never to darken their door again. Which was when she discovered the bun in her oven.
Jake had never seen a picture of him, and he looked like Mary, so for all he knew, the guy could have had a third eye in his forehead. He must have been tall, though, because Mary was a good seven inches shorter than her son.
It was 1980, smack-dab in doorway to the Me-Generation. The ink might have been still wet on Roe v Wade, but it was the law, so she could have gone to Portland and taken care of it, but for whatever reason, had decided not to. It wasn’t from any moral objection to abortion.
Jake’s mother was a stubborn, strong-willed, independent woman. There’s no way in Hell she would ever allow any man or anyone to tell her what she could or could not do with her body. And since she believed it for herself, saw no reason why every other woman shouldn’t have the same choice. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, right?
But then she was left with a future Medal of Honor recipient in her belly, in a small town, and living with a brother who did not approve. By this point, their father had been three years in the grave and so Ian, twenty-three, and well on his way to his second of three Masters’ degrees at the University of Oregon, was all she had. Of course he’d given her a hard time about it, because that’s what siblings do. It’s like a law. But it didn’t change the fact that getting pregnant at seventeen with no job, no husband and an incomplete high school education wasn’t the wisest move.
Ian never turned his back on her. Even though he was working like mad to finish his Master’s, four hours north in Eugene, he came home every single weekend. And as she got close to having her fantastically handsome and brilliant (or so Jake thought as he drove through the empty miles) baby boy, Ian left the university and took a teaching job at a high school close by, in Medford, so he could take care of her.
And so she had Jake, and her brother had bent over backwards to take care of them. But she couldn’t shake the shameful idea that he somehow looked down on her. Six months later, after getting her high school diploma and being accepted with a full scholarship to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, School of Nursing, she walked away, taking her baby with her.
For seventeen years and eight months, it was just the two of them. They’d return to Oregon for Christmas, and every couple years they’d spend two weeks there getting out of the hellish summer heat of Las Vegas. Mary had boyfriends, but nothing serious; Jake had regular friends and, by and by, girlfriends. He got in the usual amount of trouble: smoked a little pot, ditched school a few times, got into a few fights that amounted to nothing more than glorified wrestling matches, did a little of this and a little of that, but never enough to get into any real trouble. It was a life, and life is what it is.
And then shortly after his eighteenth birthday, Jake joined the US Coast Guard and got the Hell out of there. This had nothing to do with her. He adored his mother. In his personal book, she was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Las Vegas, on the other hand, was a lousy place to be a kid.
Back in the Nineties, they foolishly tried to make it family friendly – a doomed experiment from the word go. After all, they didn’t call Vegas Sin City because it sounded catchy. Las Vegas existed for exactly one reason: sin; an adult playground, centered on the six or so square mile Strip, filled with casinos and alcohol, legal strip joints and (sort of) illegal prostitution.
So he’d bailed first chance he got, and in retrospect, it had been the right thing to do. But in the self-absorption of adolescence, he’d forgotten about one thing: Mom.
She had her friends, to be sure, and a job she loved, but when Jake left, the center of her world left with him, and as the saying goes, the center did not hold. Which was not to say her life had revolved around her son, or that it collapsed in his absence. Once he’d gotten old enough to fend for himself without getting electrocuted trying to discover the strange and mystifying world behind the electrical outlets (or otherwise setting fire to himself or the house), she stopped hovering and allowed Jake to become Jake.
When he hit the road, a big part of what her life had been hit the road with him. Whether from the hackneyed Empty Nest Syndrome, or whether it was something else, the end-result remained: she couldn’t just fill a Jake-sized void in the blink of an eye - not if she had a soul.
And then she met Freddy Perdue.
Jake’s thoughts regarding his mother’s ex-husband went so far beyond biased as to be rendered predictable, but that didn’t change the fact that the guy had been a Class-A Prick. Jake joined the Coast Guard in 1998. His mother married Perdue in 1999, in a typical Vegas wedding. Jake never did get her to tell him one way or the other if she’d been drunk at the time, but his strong suspicion was that she must have been positively blotto.
Whenever he asked, her answer had always been, “Shut up.” In any case, he had been otherwise occupied fixing buoys up in Alaska and did not attend. Not that he tried very hard.
Jake met Freddy exactly once, briefly, while home on leave after navigation school, and didn’t think anything about him - just one more of the boyfriends she went through every so often. The last thought in his mind (and possibly hers) was that they’d end up married.
Maybe she’d been happy. His Mom was a smart enough woman, drunk or sober, not to do something so big (or stupid) entirely on a whim. Whatever the case, it didn’t turn out well.
Perdue had been a civilian, working for the Air Force, doing Secret Squirrel stuff out at Area 51 and China Lake. Jake liked to picture him performing anal probes or maybe animal husbandry on aliens or something equally disgusting, but the reality was some kind of engineering project having to do with stealth technology and drones. In any event, supposedly, security was sphincter-tight - tighter, as it happened, than Perdue, himself, had been wrapped, and apparently (obviously) the pressure got to him. Maybe it was nothing more than a matter of him being screwed up to begin with: bad wiring, bad brain chemistry, whatever.
Roughly three years into their marriage, he snapped, beat the crap out of her, and left her in the hospital with broken ribs. The Air Force called him in to talk about it, and Perdue had apparently thought it would be a good idea to take a baseball bat to the Captain performing the interview, so they tucked him away somewhere safe, with a padded cell, Thorazine injections, and a strict no media policy. The last thing the Air Force wanted was yet another scandal, so they quietly, yet completely locked him up where he could do no harm, and it was a damned good thing.
Mary - having worked emergency medicine for years - knew all the cops and firefighters. Had they gotten hold of Perdue, it would not have been pretty. Had Jake gotten hold of him, there would have been serious jail time involved - for Jake. He strongly suspected he’d have killed the son of a bitch. But by the time he’d gotten back to Vegas, a couple days after the fact, Perdue was locked safely away in Loony-Land.
And that’s where he should still be, but for some unknown reason, those stupid fucks let him go. Forget what his Mom said. He was going to have somebody’s balls for this, just as soon as they got back from Oregon.
6
Gravel Road
North of Tonopah, Nevada
Freddy Perdue was pissed. The bitch fought back! There he was, giving her the best fuck of her life, and she had actually tried to kick him in the balls!
But that had always been the way, hadn’t it? The women in his life had always tried to kick him in the balls. Some, like his mother, like that absolute bitch of a wife, had succeeded. But he just kept going, just kept moving, away from home, away from college (where he’d been accused but never arrested for date rape), away from engineering school. Nothing stopped him. Nothing had ever stopped him - until his wife called the Air Force.
That had stopped him. No. That delayed him, put him out of commission fo
r . . . how long had it been? Didn’t matter. He was on the move now. Nothing would stop him, ever again. He’d proved that, hadn’t he?
That place, those doctors and nurses and orderlies, with their little pills and their needles and their injections, and the incessant talk, talk, talk. They tried to stop him, but in the end, he had fooled them all and they let him go.
That stupid pig farmer tried to stop him from taking his motor home. He’d shown that asshole, hadn’t he? Shown him the business end of his nine millimeter.
And then the asshole’s two daughters had tried to stop him, had fought and kicked and scratched. They were now nothing more than a fresh hole in the desert, just like their father, and Freddy Perdue was still moving.
He glanced in the rear view mirror at the new bitch curled up on the floor behind him. She tried to stop him, tried to kick him in the balls yet again, but he was still moving and he had given her the beating of her life. Should he kill her, too? Probably. Eventually. But not yet. Maybe after he took her in the ass.
Behind her, out of sight and tied to the bed in the back of the motor home, the other bitch hadn’t fought him, had just given up without any fight at all. But she was pretty much done, used up, nothing but a rag doll. He’d beaten her, of course, because that’s what you did. His father taught him that, had demonstrated it on his ball-kicking mother. And maybe he’d beaten her a bit too much. He wasn’t sure. He’d felt something break the last time. So now she was like a toy, relegated to the bottom of the toy box because it just didn’t work anymore. He’d need to kill her - dig another hole in the desert and drop her in. Should make the other bitch watch. Teach her a lesson.
Dig a hole in the desert . . .
He frowned at his own reflection in the rear view mirror. Something wasn’t right. Just what that was, escaped him for a moment, but then he knew:
He hadn’t hidden the last body.
That stupid jag-off in Tonopah - that asshole who had yelled Stop! After shoving the new bitch into the motor home and dropping her with a well-placed whack on the head with his gun, he’d stepped back out and shot the meddling idiot. But he hadn’t hidden the body.
7
US-95
Nevada Desert
Mary woke up about an hour South of Tonopah as they were passing the Nellis Air Force Base Test Range, where they practiced blowing things up.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“The middle of nowhere,” Jake replied. “You’ve got some drool on your chin.”
“Do not,” she replied, wiping at it anyway. “Could you be a bit more specific?”
“We’ll be in Tonopah in about an hour.”
“Any chance there’s a rest area between here and there?”
“None whatsoever.”
She thought about this for a moment, possibly weighing her need against any potential public humiliation, and then said: “Pull over so I can find a cactus.”
Jake debated whether or not to tell her the truth, perhaps seeking a bit of revenge for some of the numerous times she’d embarrassed him as a youngster, but then decided to take pity on her. “Squeeze your legs together, Mother. We’re about fifteen minutes away from Gold Strike.”
“Thank God,” she replied.
8
Medford, Oregon
Thomas Jericho, David Bourassa, and Richard Crenshaw, along with their pilot, copilot, and nurse, touched down in Medford, Oregon, an hour ago, after a mildly bumpy, but otherwise routine flight from Boise. Jericho had been in and out of consciousness, the nurse watching for any ill-effects from the altitude. There had been none.
They’d picked Medford for three reasons: it was out of the evacuation zone, they had an open airfield, and it was home to one of their affiliate stations. They would need this last. There was God’s work to do, and they would need to use the core of loyal listeners and local staff to do it.
They transferred him to the hospital and tucked him into a private room, as per standard procedure for any medical transfer, but Jericho was having none of it. He was awake, aware, and ready to get to work.
“We need to get up and running as soon as possible,” he told his two partners in what had been crime (more or less) but was now something more, something greater. “I need to find a radio station, a recording studio, or both. And we need to set up the Network feed. We need to get The Word out.” He said The Word with a reverence he’d never actually felt before.
This was a new thing. For the first time since he started this televangelistic con, and maybe for the first time in his entire life, Thomas Jericho actually believed. A normal man, an average man, might think this had something to do with the blow to the head he’d taken when a section of the Church of the Universal Savior roof fell on him during the earthquake, but he was not normal. He was not average. He was a man on a mission. He was the Beacon of God.
The fact seventeen people died, and another forty-seven had been injured during the collapse meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. Just as the fact they’d left their entire staff behind to fend for themselves meant nothing to him. What were those people compared to the Beacon of God? He had been Chosen, and now it was time to get to work.
Crenshaw hesitated. Bourassa did not.
“Make it happen,” the Security Chief told the Communications Director.
9
US-95
Gold Strike, Nevada
Gold Strike, Nevada was pretty much what one would expect from a roadside ghost town in the ass-crack of the world: two gas stations (one of them, Gold Strike Gas-n-Gro, doubling as a grocery), Bob’s Truck Stop Diner, Uncle Buck’s Mineral Curio Emporium, a few nondescript buildings and desert-faded houses, and - the biggest building of all - the Strike It Rich Casino and Roadhouse. Jake fully expected to see tumbleweeds rolling across the street as the two of them got out of the truck in front of the Gas-n-Gro on stiff legs, but there were none.
A strong, cold breeze stirred up the dust that covered nearly everything. The aroma of pancakes wafted over from Bob’s, but mixed with the airborne debris, it smelled more like the dust bunny breeding ground under Jake’s bed than anything he wanted to put into his mouth.
Mary scurried toward the grocery, tossing a quick “Walk Molly,” as she headed in to relieve herself. A disembodied voice from what had to be a radio or TV floated ghost-like through the door as she entered, and then snapped off as it closed behind her. Jake heard the words “Judgment Day” and then nothing but the swirling wind.
Chuckling at the appropriate, yet disconnected comment, he escorted Molly as she took care of business in the empty lot alongside the colorless adobe building. Whoever had said it wasn’t far wrong.
While Jake doubted the veracity of the Judgement Day predictions, along with the sanity of those predicting it, he couldn’t dismiss the idea that they were on the brink of a cataclysm. Old Murphy, with his Law tucked underneath his arm, seemed to be wandering the land, spreading death and chaos and other, generalized, Bad Shit. Granted, there had been natural disasters before, and he’d witnessed some real doozies over the years (St. Helens, the Indonesian tsunami, Katrina, the Northridge earthquake) but this one felt different, somehow.
Once the Noodle finished slurping water from her bowl, he meant to top off the gas tank, but was halted by a handwritten sign declaring Cash Only. He wasn’t surprised. Credit card machines (especially older models like he just knew this place had) ran through the phone lines - a significant number of which must have gone down from all the rattling and rolling.
When Molly looked up from her water bowl with that you may take this away now, expression on her furry face, he guided her into the back seat, disconnected the leash, and shut her inside, then headed for the Gas-n-Gro.
“… brought down the wrath of God for the sins of abortion, homosexuality, pornography and rampant atheism,” the radio voice declared as Jake entered the shop. “We have mingled the races and shunned the Church. Hollywood takes His name in vain and treats Christianity as
a joke. This has been a long time coming, folks. God is a great landlord and the rent is due.”
Another male voice cut in as the applause from the studio audience swelled through the radio speakers. It sounded fake - canned, prerecorded, pure bullshit. “The Reverend Thomas Jericho and Jericho Ministries needs your help in this time of tribulation. Send your offering of support to…”
“Funny how it always comes down to money,” Mary commented with no small amount of sarcasm. She leaned against the counter alongside two crusty old codgers, both wearing faded chinos, and one middle-aged man with a Jack Daniels ball cap on his head. An older woman in red stretch pants approaching maximum density, and a green sweatshirt festooned with Christmas elves stood behind the counter next to the cash register.
“Reverend Jericho is a great man,” the woman declared, as if daring Mary to dispute her, which it looked like she just might do, so Jake stepped in.
“Can I get forty bucks on... I don’t know...whatever the pump is out there?”
She gave Mary her version of a stern glare, and then turned to Jake and smiled. “Cash only, honey.”
Jake handed over two twenties, then took his mother by the arm and pulled her toward the door. The last thing they needed there in the middle of nowhere was for her to go off on one of her antireligious rants.
Mary made no secret of her stance on religion. And since Jake knew the kind of horrors she saw in the Emergency Room on a more or less regular basis, he couldn’t really blame her. But since nothing with his mother was - or had ever been - simple, it wasn’t as clear-cut as a disbelief in God. The jury remained stubbornly out on that one, but her aversion to religion, on the other hand, came from a unanimous verdict: she didn’t like it.
Pressure (Book 1): Fall Page 13
