Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

I’m going to burn. Just like before, in Wyoming, when Adam burned down our ranch and killed Mom and Dad and Chloe and—

There is another sound, a screeching, grinding bang. All at once, Carlos vanishes. So do the flames.

I’m on my back, in front of the depot, the wet concrete soaking through my clothes. Annie is close by, on her knees, retching, as if trying to bring up something foul. The Zigzag Man must have hit her, too. Nic is still holding Leo, but the bike he was on—

I don’t really understand what I’m seeing. As I turn my head, I catch sight of the bike, which is roaring across the parking lot – just like before, when I turned the key with my PK. And dancing out of the way, cursing, nearly getting creamed by it—

The Zigzag Man.

He only just dodges the charging bike. As it crashes to the ground, his head snaps towards us.

He’s dressed in all-black, like before. Same black bandanna, tied over the lower half of his face. Above the bandanna, below the thick mane of straggly black hair, his eyes radiate pure hatred.

“Leave us alone!” Leo screams.

The Zigzag Man tilts his head. “It’s time to go, little bug.”

“Back off, asshole,” Nic snarls at him.

Get up. But I can’t move. I feel like I’m waking up from a deep sleep myself, my movements sluggish and uncoordinated, my PK a distant memory. I don’t know what’s happening here. Where did the Zigzag Man come from? Did Nic attack him with the bike? How—?

“Motherfucker!”

Another bang. This one much closer. Then two more.

Pop. She’s coming out the front of the depot, a glare on her mashed face, a big-ass assault rifle held tight to her shoulder. I can’t see her eyes from here, but it’s as if she doesn’t know where she is. She’s just shooting, firing at anything that moves.

The Zigzag Man looks at her, and she stumbles. The rifle clatters to the concrete, Pop swatting at the air, like she’s being attacked by a swarm of flies. She twists her face away, cowering… and screams.

In one move, Annie reaches down, scooping me up and dropping me onto the back of the bike. I didn’t even see her get off the ground.

“Hold on!” she barks at me.

Somehow, my hands find her waist, hold tight.

Then she guns the throttle, and shoots right towards the Zigzag Man. For the second time, he tries to get out the way, but the edge of the handlebar just catches him across the waist. He grunts, knocked sideways. Pop is still firing, and I swear one of the bullets passes an inch from my face.

Nic’s got hold of his bike again, lifting it up, hoisting a screaming Leo onto it and desperately twisting the key. The Zigzag Man reaches for him, fingers hooked into claws, but then the throttle catches. The bike kicks into life, and then all of us – me and Annie, Nic and Leo – thunder across the parking lot.

The Zigzag Man’s eyes meet mine. The fury in them is almost beyond words. There’s a horrible, fleeting moment where he’s Carlos again, burning, blistering before my eyes—

Then we’re gone.

THIRTY-SIXReggie

The cab driver won’t load Reggie’s chair.

It’s a problem she’s had before, many times. On a normal day, it would be exasperating, another insult to be endured. Today, it makes her want to spit lava.

She’s on the curb outside the China Shop offices. It’s full dark now, about 9 p.m., drizzle falling from a leaden sky. She’s wearing a rain jacket, a thick one with decent padding. Putting on her own clothes is hell – most days, she needs Annie’s help to do it. But if she has to, she can get her arms into a jacket, even if it does take her ten minutes.

“It won’t fit,” the driver protests. He has the build of a linebacker gone to seed, with messy red hair and a pencil-thin moustache.

“You think this is my first rodeo?” Reggie snaps. “Pick me up, put me in the back, then put the chair in the trunk. Why do you think I ordered a bigger ride?”

The driver sniffs. “It’s too heavy to lift anyway.”

“So it will fit. You just don’t want to put your back out.”

“I don’t have insurance. I don’t wanna get sued if something happens. And besides, if I pick you up… I mean, you’re a woman and all…”

None of this is new to Reggie. Anybody with a disability has gone through it – hell, it was a running joke in her theatre troupe, that they’d miss their performances because they couldn’t get cabs or ride-sharing. If only her regular cab company was still around. It would have saved her having to deal with this fool, and his problematic beliefs.

God, she loathes the word problematic. It’s an academic’s word, one trotted out by the speaker to show how erudite they are. A look-at-me word, never deployed to correct a wrong, just to extract attention. Or, more often, simply to indicate something the speaker doesn’t like, and doesn’t think anybody else should like either.

It’s not that it was wrong to use, in terms of the strict definition, but it carried so much baggage. And it was absolutely useless in getting other people to change their ways. Telling someone what they said was problematic was like throwing a tennis ball at a wall. You’d entertain yourself, for a while, but you were never busting through.

In Reggie’s experience, most people aren’t deliberately evil. They just don’t always think about their words. In most cases, she’s happy to set them straight. Not tonight. Tonight, she does not have time to put up with whatever nonsense this ignorant asshole is sending her way, or to wait an hour for another cab to show up

She fixes him with a sweet smile. “Honey, let me tell you something. You know what I do for a living?”

“I don’t really—”

“I’m a hacker.”

He scoffs. “OK.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I mean…”