“Do we have a sensible answer?” Jake asked.
The third male of the bunch said, in a deep and gravelly voice: “Shouldn’t be too much longer. They took the dead guy away about a half-hour ago. Not much reason to keep traffic backed up.”
“Not that there’s much traffic,” the younger guy observed. He was right. Only five cars were lined up on their end of the road, and it looked like an even half-dozen, coming from the other way, beyond the gaggle of emergency vehicles.
A young officer made his way over to them, his black Smokey the Bear hat canted low over his sun-glassed eyes. The creases in his gray uniform could have cut meat. He held several papers in his hand.
“We are looking for an older model motor home, white, with green trim, Nevada licence plates, and a Palin for President bumper-sticker,” he said without preamble. “The driver is an older man, in his fifties. Five-eight or nine. Wearing gray work pants and a brown jacket. Last seen heading North.” He passed out the papers he’d been carrying. On it, was a photostat of a drivers licence. Seeing it, a knife of pure ice jabbed into Jake’s spine. “We believe the person he abducted was this woman: Rachel Adams.”
The picture stared at him, the hazel eyes cutting right into his heart. It was Dani.
“If you see this vehicle or this man, do not attempt to approach. He is considered armed and extremely dangerous. Call 9-1-1 immediately.” The officer thanked them all, then turned and walked toward the line of cars on the other side of the crime scene.
The police cars started to leave. The men nodded to each other and headed for their own cars, with the remaining woman following Mister Deep Voice. The tall, thin woman looked honestly disappointed that the fun seemed to be at an end, but then she, too departed for her Lexus.
Jake got back in the truck, and Mary knew at a glance that something was very wrong. She asked him about it.
In reply, he handed her the flyer.
“Is this the woman who got abducted?” She asked.
He nodded.
“Then, what?”
“I know her,” he said, then started the engine, put it in gear, and headed through town. His mind was numb, his heart cold, an odd buzzing in his ears. It was all he could do to avoid flooring it.
This would, of course, serve no purpose, since he had no idea where the motor home might be. Heading there fast wouldn’t change a single thing. Plus, it would scare the crap out of his mom, and unleash the darkness he’d so far been able to keep contained, deep inside. The last damned thing he needed was to let that fucker loose.
And, again, what good would it do?
Molly nuzzled his ear from the backseat, sensing his distress the way dogs do. He automatically reached over his shoulder and scratched her head, because that’s what humans do, but he wasn’t really paying attention.
He could see his mother with his peripheral vision, but did not glance in her direction. She, on the other hand, stared at him. He knew what she had to be thinking. Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, then closed again. She wanted to ask him about Dani. He really didn’t want to go into it, didn’t want to start his own mind going down that road.
Mary, as his mother, probably knew this. As a naturally curious woman, however, she wanted to know more; hence, the fish-imitation with her mouth. He heard her sigh, then saw her give a little shake of her head, then turn and face forward. Thank you, Mom, he thought. And he loved her for it.
They pulled into a fast food drive-thru and grabbed breakfast, and then swung into what appeared to be the only bank in sight. A sign adorned the front door. It was “closed temporarily due to computer problems,” which Jake took to mean the DSL lines were down, presumably damaged by all the earthquakes, just like the phones. Whatever the reason, they were stuck with the money they had on hand.
What the fuck was Dani doing up here? He thought, in spite of his best intentions not to go there. The drive thru food sat untouched in his lap, the warmth seeping through his pant leg, but it didn’t register. Only one thing did: he wanted to do something.
But what could he do? Nothing. Not a single goddamned thing. So he concentrated on driving, instead.
Tonopah was the halfway point between Vegas and Reno, and that’s pretty much all it had going for it. The 95, which shot more or less due north all the way from the Mexican border, cut west/east toward Reno to the west, and the vast nothing that was Eastern Nevada. They turned briefly east, then north again on the 376 through the Big Smoky Valley. If the middle of nowhere had a middle of nowhere, that was it; miles and miles of blasted landscape, with nothing to look at but rocks and sage and tumbleweeds, and the endless, empty road.
Their radio choices seemed limited to a country station of the I-love-my-wife-but-I-won’t-let-her-drive-my-truck-because-she-drinks-too-much-and-she-ran-over-my-dog variety, and more of the Reverend Thomas Jericho. Neither sounded appealing. Neither gave him what he wanted: information.
Jake wanted to hear the news, so he could find out what he was driving into, what was going on out at Yellowstone, and what was happening with the search for Dani. But apparently the country station was pre-taped, with no DJ’s and canned commercials, and he could hardly call the Jericho Ministries news. The tension built inside of him with no relief in sight.
He couldn’t do anything. That was the problem. He couldn’t just magically find Dani. He couldn’t connect with Mother Nature and ask what the fuck about the volcano. And whatever they were driving into would be there, whether he knew about it ahead of time or not. Still, he needed to mentally grab onto something, like a life ring to a drowning man, to compartmentalize. If he didn’t, he might just lose his mind.
He could drive, and was driving, but if he didn’t get something to latch his brain onto, his head would just flat explode. He could, he supposed, join into his mother’s diatribe on all things religious, which had been sparked, he was sure, by Jericho’s Blah, blah, blah God, blah, blah, blah Judgement Day droning through the SUV’s speakers, but it wouldn’t have mattered much. Mary was too spun up about it.
“They irritate me, Jake.”
“No. Really?” He replied, with far more sarcasm than he should have. She answered with a warning stink eye, then carried on as if it hadn’t happened.
“How can people who are supposed to be preaching the word of a man who was, if nothing else, tolerant be so intolerant?”
Jake could have answered, but the question had been rhetorical and it wouldn’t have made a difference in any case, because she was on a roll. He just let it slide off him - since he wasn’t really paying attention to her rant - and latched upon the only thing he could: harsh realities.
As Jake drove through mile after mile of cactus and sage brush and sand and rocks, and as Mary went on and on about the problem with religion, he thought about just how bad things were going to get. If he couldn’t get actual information, at least he could analyze what little he did know, and from that, plan accordingly.
Best-case scenario, the western United States was in a world of hurt. Any time disaster struck one city, it was bad. This latest disaster had struck seven of them, along with countless small towns and unincorporated areas. So even the rosiest outlook had to be pretty grim. Millions of displaced people, hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, added to an already piss-poor economy, roads wrecked, broken or unreliable communication lines, emergency services stretched way beyond the breaking point, dogs and cats living together. No matter how he looked at it, it spelled exactly one thing: bad news.
5
NV 376
Middle of Nowhere, Nevada
Perdue knew he was in deep shit. So deep, it kept blasting through his mouth in an endless mantra: shit, shit, shit, punctuated each time by a slapped palm upon the steering wheel.
He hadn’t hidden the body.
They were going to find out. They were going to know. And then they were going to come for him.
“Shit!” he shouted again.
He needed to th
ink, needed to take control of the situation. That was the key. He nodded to himself.
Up ahead, he saw a dirt road, shooting off to the left, similar to the one he’d driven down when he took his first taste of the new slut - and she tried to kick him in the balls. He took a quick second to glance at her through the rear view: still lying on the floor beneath the table. Good. He turned off the highway and bounced down the dirt road.
First get out of sight. Then think this through. Then maybe a quick poke at his new acquisition . . . ? No. No time for that now. Prioritize. Think. Use your big head. You’re smarter than they are. You always have been.
That much was absolutely true. He had always been the smartest one in the room. Ever since junior high, the first time he’d had to correct one of his teacher’s mathematical fuck-ups, he knew he was superior.
Mister Zoven had been his name: a big man, with an absurd handlebar mustache, and an enormous ego. He’d been putting it to their English teacher, Mrs. Radosh. She’d been a pretty little thing, and all the boys adored her. And all of them had been shocked when news of the affair spread through the school like whispered wildfire. All, except Freddy, that is.
He had known she was a slut. Of course she was. She was a woman, and, therefore, naturally a slut. They all were. That much he’d learned early in life, the first time he’d seen his mother - the Queen Ball-Kicker - bent over their livingroom couch with their landlord slamming her from behind. He’d been...what...six then? He’d come home early from school, sick with the flu. Well, he’d certainly gotten an education that day! Along with one hell of a beating from his embarrassed mother.
The dirt road snaked through the dusty valley, and finally bent around a sage-covered arroyo. It took some backing and filling and swearing, but he managed to get the motor home turned around so that it pointed back the way they’d come. He put it in park and turned the engine off. It ticked in the dust-covered silence.
Things were bad. No denying it. Accept the things you cannot change. Yes. And Change the things you can. He certainly had the wisdom to know the difference, thus completing the oft-repeated mantra they’d shoved down his throat at the hospital. He chuckled at the idea.
I wonder what they think of their decision to release me now.
But wait a minute . . . Did they know it was him? He hadn’t seen anyone else there - anyone but the fool who tried to stop him from getting what he wanted.
He glanced at the new slut through the mirror. Great body. Wonderfully tight pussy. And okay, it had been dry, but so what? It had served its purpose - right until she tried to kick him in the balls.
The anger swelled within him, threatening to obliterate everything else in his mind. No! Stop! He slapped himself hard in the face. Think, fool, think! Oh, but he wanted her, wanted to bend her back over the table, wanted to sample that sweet ass.
NO!
He slapped himself again, harder this time.
Think now.
Fuck Later.
He breathed deep and blinked in the bright sunlight stabbing through the windshield. The dust had settled, leaving a thick patina on the nose of the motor home. How long had he been sitting there? It could have been moments. It could have been hours.
No. Not hours. Couldn’t be. Moments, then. Focus! Analyze the problem.
No one else had seen them when he took the new slut - no one other than the man he murdered. He felt sure of this. So they couldn’t know it was him. And even if there had been somebody else there, how would they know his name? He looked just like everyone else. He wasn’t Tom Fucking Cruise. There hadn’t been banner headlines when they’d released him. There wasn’t a single damned reason for anybody to know.
But they might have seen the motor home.
He caressed the steering console. His new fuck palace on wheels. Be a shame to get rid of it. How could he transport his sluts? Still, something to consider. Maybe what he needed was a place to go to ground.
He looked at the sage-covered emptiness around him. Nothing here but rocks and sand and tumbleweeds. Probably scorpions, too.
He hated the fucking desert. Always had. But the desert was where the Air Force hid their secrets, and so this was where they’d sent him.
Their security had been insane: paranoia raised to an art form. And they had always been watching him, watching his every move, sifting through his office garbage, searching his briefcase, night and day, coming and going. They’d even gone so far as to black out the windows of the buses they used to bring them all to work. Stupid, really. As if they didn’t know exactly where they were going. As if the UFO nuts hadn’t posted the locations all over the Internet.
United Fucking States Fucking Air Force.
Fuck ‘em. He’d shown them, hadn’t he?
Had he? Hadn’t he just spent...how long was it? How many years? Still, he was free now. All he had to do was figure out what to do next.
He needed somewhere to hide. And he needed money. And he needed supplies.
He thought of the other woman - the old slut - tied to the bed in back. He also needed new pussy. She would have to go. The new one could stay for a while, could still be amusing. He’d need to cure her of the ball-kicking, but that’s what his fists were for, weren’t they? So...what? Kill the old one now? Dig a hole out here and drop her body into it? No. It would take too much time. He needed to get out of sight. But where?
Hadn’t there been a mileage sign a little ways back? Yes. Carvers 22 miles . . .
6
Inside the Motor Home
22 Miles South of Carvers, NV
Dani heard The Animal swearing at himself and felt the motor home turning onto the dirt road, the bouncing and jolting sending nauseating waves of pain through her battered kidneys. She felt the clumsy vehicle turn around. More bouncing. More jolting. More waves of pain. She felt them stop, heard the engine die, heard The Animal muttering to himself. And then there had been the sound of a slap.
She’d almost opened her eyes at that, but she hadn’t. She’d kept them closed, kept her body still, swallowed the moans of pain that wanted to burst from her lungs. Her life depended on The Animal thinking she was unconscious. Didn’t know how she knew that, but know it, she did.
She lay on her side in the fetal position, facing forward. Her cheek rested on the carpet. She could smell whatever solvent had been used the last time it had been cleaned. It smelled like a mixture of pine and roses. Her childhood home had smelled like that. She could remember the whole house being filled with the aroma every time her mother shampooed the carpets. She had played on those carpets, her dolls strewn all over her bedroom. But that had been before the Rat Bastard, before he stole her innocence, before she became a whore. Before everything. Before The Animal.
Sooner or later he would come back to her, rouse her, rape her, but she didn’t think it would happen just yet. Something, some internal argument was going on inside The Animal’s head. She had no idea what, had no clue what lunatic thoughts had caused him to slap himself, and she didn’t want to know. Whatever those thoughts were, whatever inner conflict occupied that twisted mind, it kept him away from her, and she was damned if she would give him any reason to change - anything like opening her eyes.
And then she heard him slap himself again - harder this time. She stifled a scream. He was becoming unhinged - not that it was much of a leap.
Crazy is as crazy does, she thought, and then had to bite her own tongue to keep down the wave of hysterical laughter threatening to overwhelm her. The thought, crazy is as crazy does, sent an instant image of a demented Forrest Gump dancing across her mind’s eye. He sat on the park bench. He held a box of chocolates in his lap. And then he opened it, revealing rows of tiny, severed heads. They were screaming.
Get a grip, Dani!
The engine started again with a roar. She heard the gear shift jammed into place. The motor home jolted as it began to roll down whatever bad road they were on. She took a chance and opened her eyes. Just once, just for a se
cond.
She saw him there, hunched over the steering wheel, concentrating on his driving. She closed her eyes again, took a deep breath. Real quick, she thought to herself. One look, real quick, just to see. She reopened her eyes.
He sat there, still driving. She moved her head and looked at her hands, zip-tied to the stanchion, then followed the pole to its apex. It ended at the underside of the rectangular table. Four brackets extended outward: two long, two short. They were flat and pocked with rust, each with a vertical strip bolted into the stanchion.
She closed her eyes and moved her head back into what she hoped was its original position. She had seen something else, something important, but she couldn’t pin it down. What was it? Think. Visualize.
The underside of the table had looked funny. Scratched, yes, but that wasn’t it. The wood, or whatever synthetic, processed gunk that passed for wood, had been dark with age and dust, but not everywhere. Four horizontal bands next to each of the four brackets had been lighter. Now what did that mean?
The brackets had been moved, sometime in the not-so distant past. Why? A repair. The brackets had been repaired. Or replaced.
Now, why did that matter?
The motor home bounced, once, twice, then the road smoothed out beneath it. Back on the highway? Yes. Must be. Forget that now. Think about the brackets.
So, they had been replaced. So what? She looked at them with her mind, examined them: long, flat, grey, pocked with rust. No. If there was rust, they couldn’t have been replaced. They weren’t new. So, they had been moved. So what?
The four brackets each had been fastened to the table in two places. The nuts looked like Mickey Mouse ears. What were those called? Butterfly nuts. Yes. That was it.
So what?
So she wouldn’t need a wrench to remove them. She could do it with her hands.
7
Pressure (Book 1): Fall Page 15
