Whores: not intended to be a factual account of the gender war

Whores

not intended to be a factual account of the gender war

Copyright 2012 Nicolas Wilson

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

.01 Prologue

.02 Beginning

.03 The Fire

.04 The Fiancé

.05 Shelter

.06 Deborah

.07 Junk Mail

.08 False Start

.09 On the Fence

.10 Premature

.11 Ofelia

.12 Executive Decision

.13 The Most Precious Gift

.14 Enemy of the State

.15 Right to Bear Arms

.16 Sympathy for the Devil

.17 Choice

.18 Near Miss

.19 Disarmed

.20 Poll Dance

.21 Crisis

.22 Vitals

.23 Sexploitation

.24 Bombshell

.25 W

.26 Closer

.27 Bitch Tax

.28 Edge

.29 Pill to Swallow

.30 Punch Drunk

.31 Here to Paternity

.32 Rubicon

.33 Blood of Patriots

.34 Interrogation

.35 Asylum

.36 Mayday

.37 Reunion

.38 Safety

.39 The Plan

.40 The Loop

.41 PR Coup

.42 Execution

.43 Nachthexen

.44 Train to Catch

.45 Epilogue

From the Author

Dedication

Preview: Dag

Preview: Dogs Of War

Preview: Nexus

Other Books by Nic

Le Gal Disclaimer

.01 Prologue

The air smelled strangely to Deborah. It was a stale odor, with a tinge of medical solvents. But there were other smells, too: tobacco, and cat vomit. I’m sorry, her doctor said. The last renter was a slob. But we were lucky to find anyone who would rent to us. Unconsciously the doctor touched her cheek, and the inch-tall capital letter A burned into her skin just below her blue eye.

It’s okay, Dr. Gerson, Deborah said. I’m just nervous.

Please, it’s Jolee; and technically they took away my medical license, anyway. But this procedure is completely safe.

Yeah, Deborah said, unable to meet her eyes. Procedure.

If you’re having second thoughts, we don’t have to do it today. We can reschedule.

Again, you mean? Deborah sighed. I can only put off for so long before the damn thing’s going to come out on its own and start demanding things, like candy bars or an education. That was an attempt at levity. Jolee gave her a puzzled look. This shouldn’t be a morose thing. I don’t want cake and a party, either. But this isn’t shameful- it shouldn’t be.

You're right, Jolee put her hand on Deborah's.

Peter got me pregnant. We were trying to be safe. Using the rhythm method and fertility awareness. I even still had an IUD that was supposed to still be functional- from back when those were legal.

It wasn’t your fault, Jolee said to her. No method is 100% effective.

I’ll lose my job if I have to take maternity leave. I’ve probably already lost Peter.

If you’re sure, Jolee said, hesitant to push her, we can start prepping you.

There was a heavy knock on the door. Open up, this is the police.

Jolee's expression changed, her features hardened, and her eyes were demanding when they fixed Deborah. Do you know how to fire a gun? Jolee asked her.

What? Deborah asked.

"The police. If it’s really them, and not just some anti-abortion shitheads, they don’t arrest people at abortion clinics."

What? Deborah asked again, panicking.

Jolee knew she wasn't getting anywhere, so she turned her attention to her nurse, who had been standing silently in the corner. Take her to the bathroom, set her up with a gun.

The nurse aimed Deborah’s shoulders towards the door out of the bedroom. She glanced down the hall, to the front door to the apartment, rattling in its frame as someone pounded on it again. The receptionist, Laura, was standing beside the door, holding a shotgun with a pistol grip.

The nurse pushed Deborah down the hall, into the bathroom, and shut the door behind herself. If we had the time to do this right I’d start you off with a .22 and build your confidence up. But they’ll be wearing armor, and you might as well spit loogies at them as use a .22. She opened the drawer beneath the sink, and retrieved a pistol. This is a .45. It’ll stop an armored man in his tracks- provided you hit him. Safety’s already off; you hold it with both hands, steady it, point and pull. It’s got a light trigger-pull, but it’s going to kick. Brace for that. This is your life, and these are our rights we’re fighting for.

She got under the bathroom sink, and pulled out a carbine. She ejected the magazine and checked it, slid it back in and chambered the first round. Then the nurse locked the bathroom door and shut it behind her; it really bothered Deborah that she couldn’t remember her nurse's name.

She found herself staring at the bathroom tiles, coral pastels in sea shell textures; the effect was far less tacky than she might have assumed. Deborah thought about having her own bathroom, in her own home, or at least an apartment she owned. She wouldn't have chosen the ocean-theming herself, but if Peter had insisted on it, she felt she could live with that.

Deborah jumped as the front door was broken inward by a battering ram. She wasn’t holding the gun up anymore; it was just hanging limply in her hand. She was crying, though she only barely registered that fact.

She heard the sound of gunfire, first ragged, then three quick, concentrated bursts of automatic fire. Idly, Deborah wondered if that had been the nurse firing. The silence that followed the bursts was thick.

The knob on the door to the bathroom started to jiggle. She wanted to think it was the nurse, but she should have known that the door was locked. The thought frightened Deborah enough that she raised the gun, though it now felt far too heavy for her to hold up, let alone use.

There was more jiggling, and the lock opened. The door swung open slowly, creaking. There was no one there.

A man, with his head fully covered by a balaclava, leaned inward. He looked right at her, and at the gun pointed awkwardly at the middle of the doorway. Deborah made no attempt to aim it at him.

He stood up, and leaned in enough to extend his sidearm. Police, he said, and fired once.

Deborah assumed she was dead, then. There was pain, blinding and brilliant, and she was falling, uncontrollably. Her head struck the tub faucet, and then she was aware that she was still alive, because, that, too, hurt. She felt warmth and wetness that stuck her hair to her head.

Then she was pulled out of the tub and laid flat down on a small rug. Members of the SWAT team gathered around her, and started opening cases filled with medical equipment. She mistook their chatter for military code, until she heard BPM, and realized they were providing care.

One of the men cut open her shirt, and then felt along her side. He used a stethoscope to listen to her breathing. It was only then that panic set in again; she was having trouble breathing. Sucking chest wound, the man with the stethoscope said, then, scalpel. One of the men peeled away the plastic packaging around one and handed him the utensil. Vitals?

Good, one of the other men told him, consulting a monitor. Deborah felt more pain, which she assumed was him cutting into her chest to help her breathe. But the incision was too low, in her abdomen. If she’d been able to she would have asked him what he was doing.

Then she felt like the skin was being stretched off her belly, and she realized that the man had his hands inside the incision he’d made. It put her in mind of her first boyfriend- though why she’d ever dated a ‘Ronnie’ she couldn’t now understand- and how he’d gotten handsy one night after taking her out. Except now the awkward pawing was happening under her skin. She was almost thankful that blood loss and shock kept her from the full horror of that moment.

And then he removed them, and it felt like he was trying to drag all of her internal organs back out of her with his hands. Cutting the cord, he said. The cut end of her umbilical cord slapped down against Deborah’s neck, and reminded her disturbingly of Peter, and the part of him that had gotten her into this damn mess.

The man holding the fetus stood up. Seems to be breathing. He handed the child to the man he was speaking to, his superior, Lieutenant Colson, who was not wearing a mask at all. Deborah wanted to ask to see the child, but she was on the verge of passing out. The mother?

What mother? Colson asked, and drew his sidearm and shot her in the face.

And the clinic? the other man asked.

If we leave it, sooner or later they’ll set up the abortion factory again. Burn it.

Colson marched out of the room and into the hall, to where Alex Harmon was standing. Harmon wasn’t wearing tactical gear. He had on a cheap suit, and a tie so loose he was barely wearing it. Colson triumphantly held the child up in one arm. Detective, that was nice work. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Yeah, he said. That’s what I’m afraid of.

.02 Beginning

But it hadn't started there- not for me, anyway.

I was a cop for four years before they let me take the detective's exam, and that's still young. I passed it the first time, because I'd been studying for it for four years. Being a uni was fine- but it wasn't what I wanted to do with myself, chasing drunks, issuing traffic tickets.

I'd just got done with my training, on-the-jobbing with robbery, then homicide, vice and narcotics. Gender crimes was a different story.

It was a new department, new as in there were two other detectives in it, working twelve hour shifts seven days a week. They'd been doing that for eight months. The previous two detectives working that desk- the ones who set it up- took early retirement after four and seven respectively.

So by the time I was through with my training, they weren't going to wait around while I learned the ropes. Captain scheduled me for twelve hour shifts, with four hours of overlap so I could absorb a little wisdom from the nightshift guy.

Not that he'd acquired much in the way of knowledge, beyond the best places to get a donut or a burger at 3 am- though there were more than you'd think. I got to know him while I was working vice- he liked talking to vice cops; half the time I suspected he was jerking off under the table to the stories he heard. He wasn't a bad cop- just... fucked up. But in four years, I'd learned that those two little words described nearly every kind of man or woman with a badge.

I remember we did the career day thing in high school, and my tests said I should be a cop. So I met with a department chaplain. I told him, point blank, I didn't think I had the brain damage to be a cop. They don't start that way, he told me.

But there weren't a lot of options, once I graduated. The paper mill'd closed. And I had the kind of face they wouldn't let through the doors of an elementary school. So I ended up a cop, anyway.

Which it turned out suited me just fine. I had a knack, as they say. I just didn't want to be walking the streets any longer than I had to. So the moment I had a chance to transfer out of the small-town department I started in to a place with its own chief of detectives, I leapt at it. But success for me was mostly a combination of not actively fucking my career with a drug or whore problem, and luck.

The gender crime desk was a tough assignment. Like I said, it was a new post, and what little history it had was riddled with early retirements and a whole lot of pissy feelings.

At least, that's what chief of detectives told me. It might seem strange, or silly, to put you through all the other detective desks just to get to what a lot of people still think doesn't deserve its own unit. But gender crimes run the gamut. They involve drugs, they involve theft, homicide and of course vice. I'm still shocked we didn't do it that way, combine the two. They're both mostly women's crimes. The chief of detectives was a small, older man with white hair, and blue eyes that had kindness in them that disappeared the second he started talking.

Actually, vice arrests far more johns than women, I corrected him. And I think the reason they didn't, is, well, it seems a little... sordid, conflating gender crimes with vice. Almost like we're saying all women are whores.

No, you're saying that; what's more, you're saying all women are gender criminals- and that's worse. Points to either you running with the wrong kind of crowd, or you seeing every woman as a gender criminal- and either one says you need counseling.

Or it points to me having a healthy dose of cynicism, and never assuming anybody's innocent until I've had a look at them myself.

Not a bad recovery, as they go- or a bad philosophy, for a dick. But your first case is on your desk. Deborah Gladstone. Her fiancé suspects she's about to abort his child. Asked us to intervene.

Should we interview the girl?

Do you walk up to a bank robber and ask them if they're planning on robbing a bank? Christ, tell me it's just because you haven't had your coffee this morning that you're this fucking retarded.

Right. And I had a late night.

Yeah, eight hour turn-arounds are a bitch- but stop bitching about them. Information on the girl, and everything we've got on the baby daddy, is in the file on your desk. Now get the fuck out and do what we pay you your civil servant's pittance to do.

.03 The Fire

Lisa hated the night shift. She had all her windows blacked out, and wore earplugs. But the fact remained that she lived in an apartment building, and there was no keeping a building full of women quiet while she slept- not that that had anything to do with their gender.

She stirred to the sound of gunfire. The building wasn't in the nicest of neighborhoods, so that wasn't wholly unfamiliar. But this was different, because the shots were coming from inside the building. That made her skin go bumpy, and her ears prick up- not that she knew what she was listening for.

There was a steady, heavy stream of gunfire, followed by a lull, and another gunshot. Then came another loud noise, one she couldn't place, other than to say that it was louder than the shots that preceded it.

Finally, she started drifting back to sleep. Whatever had happened was over, and she told herself that if someone had needed the cops they'd have called. She was half asleep by then, so she believed the fairy tale that if one of her neighbors had called the cops, they'd have actually shown up.

But then she heard the noise, piercing, deafening. Her body was heavy, and didn't want to move. But she woke up coughing, hacking. She opened her eyes but there was only darkness. She reached for her nightstand, and found her lamp and flicked it on. Still only darkness.

But the darkness burned. Her eyes hurt, and it was a struggle keeping them open. They were filling with tears, and just as quickly spilling them onto her cheek. She tried to take another breath, and coughed it back up, and then it finally hit her: smoke. Her room was filled with smoke.

Lisa rolled off the bed and onto her floor. There the smoke was thinner. She could breathe enough to think.

The wail continued, it was her smoke detector, but behind it, joining it, like the backup choir of a powerful singer, she could hear screams. Lisa crawled with her belly against the floor.

She'd been sleeping in a ratty pair of panties and an A neck shirt that was just see-through enough she'd learned she couldn't wear it out without men staring. She wanted to grab a pair of jeans, or a coat, or her shoes, but just trying to lift herself up off the floor a few inches to survey for any one of those items of clothing sent her hacking back onto the floor.

So she pulled herself across the carpet, through her apartment, and to her front door. She tapped the doorknob leading into the hall. Then she felt the door itself. It felt cool to the touch. So she opened it.

The smoke in the hall was worse. Even crawling along the floor she couldn't breathe properly. After two attempts at inhaling, she simply refused to try a third, and started pulling herself down the stairs. It reminded her of being a child, and sliding on her belly down her parents' steps. It hurt her nipples, and she cursed again not having found a better shirt to cover herself in.

The lobby was relatively less smoky, so Lisa stood up and took a deep breath in and held it. It was like cool mountain spring water for her lungs- even though she coughed when she exhaled it.

She fell forward through the lobby doors and onto the sidewalk.

A fire truck was parked outside her building. Thank God, she thought. But then she realized that the firefighters were just standing there, watching. One of them was even smoking, pointing and laughing at the smoke billowing out of an open window.

Lisa forced herself forward. One of the firefighters caught her, and helped her sit on the lip of the fire truck. He pressed a mask of oxygen to her face, and told her to breathe in, slowly. When she didn't feel like she was in a low-rent casino, anymore, she coughed out, My neighbors.

He shook his head. I'm sorry, he told her.

She peered through the smoke now rolling out of the lobby. She could see one of her neighbors, Mrs. Kowalski, stumble through the haze. She fell past the last few steps, and landed in the shallow pool of smoke that was cascading down the steps.

Our orders were very specific: contain the fire.

But my neighbor, Lisa protested, she's right there. I can see her through the lobby doors. You have to help her.

We've been told not to. She stared at him, and through the smoke-induced tear still streaming from her eyes made her pitiful enough he felt he had to elaborate. At the eastern fire district, one of the fighters disobeyed, and tried to help, and they shot him. His jaw set as he watched the fire grow unchecked. They're lucky, he said, though she didn't think he believed it, I've been to fires that the police set, where they stay outside, and pick off the women who try to run.

But the police aren't here, she told him.

He looked to the other firefighters, already eying him for even speaking to her. I'm not so sure, he said.

You're a fucking coward, she said, feeling like she wanted to just give the whole thing up. She threw up her hands in disgust, and marched back towards the burning building.

Wait, he said, but she was done wasting her time with him. She shoved her way through the lobby doors. Smoke had finally filled the lobby as well, and she had to get back down on her hands and knees.

Mrs. Kowalski, she called. From the smoke Lisa had already inhaled, her throat was hoarse and cracked. She didn't get a response. But through the haze and ash, she could make out a large, bulbous lump at the base of the stairs, and she crawled towards it. Mrs. Kowalski. Are you all right?

She rolled the larger woman over, and tried to feel for a pulse. She couldn't find one, but she'd never been good at trying to, so she cupped her hands beneath her neighbor's armpits, and started to pull her towards the front doors.

The older woman was heavy, and Lisa's muscles were starting to burn as badly as her lungs. But she was close, she had to be, to the front door- not because she could see it, but because she knew she wasn't going to make it very far. So it had to be close.

But before she managed to reach the twin glass doors, she heard the supports from the floor above the lobby groan menacingly. Shit, she said, as the ceiling collapsed down on top of her.

.04 The Fiancé

I knocked on the door. I still couldn't fathom how one couple, with one oopsy-baby, mattered as much my new job said they did. But I figured the line from that old poem was true: it wasn't mine to reason why.

I knocked again. A thin man, with thin lips, and slightly thinning hair- though that was only evident when the light hit it a certain way- answered. May I help you? he asked politely.

Peter? I asked, and flashed him my phone, with my credentials highlighted. He held up his phone, and it chirped to authenticate my badge.

He opened the door and led me inside. He gestured to a couch and two chairs sitting around a coffee table, which made me hopeful there'd be coffee at some point. I'd learned from my stint in homicide not to sit on the couch, though; people don't like cops in their homes, with basically no exceptions, but they get even more uneasy if you start to get comfortable. So I sat in one of the chairs, and he sat down in the other. So, officer

Detective, I corrected him.

Oh, he said. I think my fiancé is getting in with a bad crowd.

That sounds serious, I said with a sardonic grin.

You know, feminist types. Few months ago, I found out she was pregnant... he hung his head. "And she won't even talk to me. She's considering murdering our child, and she won't even have a conversation about it. Truth be told, we're not ready for a kid. But we aren't talking about smoking a little pot at Christmas. It's infanticide. At a minimum."

Slow down, sir, I said. Let's take a step back; I'd like a little background on your fiancé. Where'd you two meet?

Work. We both work at an advertising firm, downtown, in the graphic design department.

And how long have you been seeing each other?

About a year.

And she became pregnant.

"I found out four months ago. She came to me, in tears. She was so upset. She thought she was pregnant. I didn't think anything of