SoulStone
# 130: Jail
Naomi Johnson wasn’t a noob. She’d grown up on the mean streets of Houston Tx and was thus street wise beyond her years long before she served a tour or two with the army in the ‘Stan. After getting out of the military life hadn’t been a bed of roses either. Her sister’s husband had dissapeared living an invalid wife and a disabled child. Naomi did what she could to help them survive. Consequently she had been driving a Limo for the ‘man’ to help pay the bills.
She’d been to jail before. It was nothing new to her.
She was prepared.
As per procedure Naomi was required to strip. The ‘nice’ policewoman took her clothes and gave here an orange coverall in return. The policewoman was remarkably naive. Naomi wasn’t. The police woman didn’t do a body cavity search. She should have.
Suffice to say...Naomi was tossed into a holding cell...with several hard cases (so they thought) but she had a little surprise up her ...er....sleeve..
Naomi had seen combat when she was in the ‘Stan even though her MOS hadn’t been combat arms...but who the hell cared when it dropped into the pot. It was either improvise, adapt, overcome........... or die. Naomi hadn’t died.
She had slept lightly that first night in jail...this wasn’t her first rodeo so she knew what to expect....she was on a hair trigger. When an inmate tried to rape her...he died. The little surprise she had up her ...er.... sleeve, was a tiny pen-gun. It only fired 22 shorts.....but that was sufficient when discharged in an ear.
The tiny bullet made almost no sound when it punctured his eardrum, burst into his brain, and bounced around inside his skull. What little brains his assailant might have had was rendered, much the same as it it had been put in a blender. He died. The other inmates in the cell had been watching. This type of thing occurred on a regular basis. When ever a new female was put in the cell, she was raped.
Not this time. From their vantage point the ‘boss hog approached the fresh meat, laid on top of her on her cot....squealed and died.
From that night on Naomi wasn’t the one loosing sleep...her cellmates cowered in terror before her. They’d never seen (or heard) the little pen-gun. They had no idea why the boss hawg had died...they just saw him collapse.
They decided that they rilly, rilly didn’t want to make that little black girly angry..
From that moment on they were very polite to her.
Eventually the misunderstanding was cleared up. No charges had been filed oddly enough so they didn’t have to be dropped. Nothing was said about the dead inmate. The jailers didn't seem to particularly suprised when they found it. Dead inmates in the morning was a fairly common thing. Naomi was released...to discover that she no longer had a job...and that her sister had died.
“ We’re all gonna die too” Naomi’s niece told her. “If we don’t do something. I saw some stuff on the Internet. Flood times are coming. We're all gonna drown."
Naomi's niece paused briefly as if she were debating with herself..then she told Naomi about a very strange dream she had a few weeks ago.
"Now that I think about it, perhaps it wasn't a dream" she said. "It sure seemed to be that WheelChair guy...talking to me a if he was right here in the room with me."
In times past Naomi had taken her Niece to a small, out of the way, hole in the wall shop, on the river, to buy a wheelchair.
Her niece was paralyzed from the waist down...the doctors were somewhat unclear as to why..so she rilly, rilly need a wheelchair. What they had been using was insufficient, but they were too poor to buy anything and too proud to beg. The circumstances which led to them entering that small shop on the river.....were, shall we say...complex...but eventually they walked in the door of that shop. The first thing Naomi said was that they were broke...she offered to work for Shelby in trade..
Shelby...the owner of that small shop..wouldn't hear of it. No such thing.
"If you were told about my establishment then you have every right to be here. Don't concern yourself with the price...Corporal...it's above your paygrade."
Naomi had NO IDEA how Shelby had known her rank in the army..she started to ask him about it but...Shelby diverted her attention.
He had provided Naomi’s niece with a FINE wheelchair...and a nice piece of jewelry too, free of charge.
Naomi had forgot all about it..until now.
“Tell me again” she told her niece “ Why am I just hearing about this now?”
“Momma told me not to tell you” her niece said “She said it was the work of the devil”
“Probably the work of what she was smoking” Naomi said “not that I mean to speak ill of your mother.”
“I understand” her niece said “ I know all about what my mother was...and what she did. What could I do? What could WE do?”
“Not a thing” Naomi said ”Not one sorry blessed thing.”
‘’That was then,,” the niece said “this is now. If we don’t do something soon we’re gonna die, like I told you.”
“So tell me more about this phone call” Naomi told her Niece
“Well...it wasn’t exactly a PHONE call.” her niece then proceeded to explain QEC and the piece of jewelry that Shelby had given her.
“No wonder your mother thought it was from the Devil” Naomi said when her niece was done. “that’s a lot to assimilate..and your mother wasn’t very technical. She was, bless her heart, somewhat TOO religious.”
“Yeah..I know” the niece said. “What could I do?”
“Not a thing,child “Naomi said “not one blessed thing. The question is now...what do WE do?”
“I guess I could call that Shelby Guy back?” the niece suggested.
“Yeah I suppose you could” Naomi agreed.
“That didn’t work out too well” Naomi told her niece when the ‘call’ was completed.
“No it didn’t” the niece agreed
“I can, as much as I hate to admit it, understand this Shelby guy’s position” Naomi said.
“I suppose.” the Niece said “hearing him say that we ‘missed the boat’ wasn’t what I wanted to hear though”.
“Life is full of disappointments” Naomi told her niece. “Best we just learn to live with it. He didn’t leave us with nothing did he?”
“Nope...” the niece said. “ he downloaded a metric shit-ton of information to me...and he said that a carrier pigeon would deliver a...something-something-something to us immediately. I’m sorry...I didn’t understand half the words he used.”
“His idea of what a pigeon looks like and mine differ quite considerably” Naomi said as she look askance at the small dragon that had just flown in through the open window.
“Special delivery” the dragon said. It sounded remarkably like Shelby. “One each...SSmoke Forge and small tele-operated SSmoke Robot....sorry that I couldn’t send you more...but this is all that I can spare. Sorry I can’t talk longer either, but I have a lot of Irons in the fire just now. Perhaps I can get back to you later.”
“...have a good day.“ The light went out of the dragon’s eyes. The video call had ended.
Naomi looked at her niece. “Ok...what just happened?”
The niece replied “ I think it’s going to be OK. We might not die after all, now we have a fighting chance.”
“That’s all I’ve ever asked” Naomi told her “That’s all anyone can ever ask. So what do we do first?”
“Clean up the apartment” The niece grinned...
Naomi frowned at her niece. Naomi had many sterling qualities...housekeeping wasn’t one of them.
“No..really.” the niece protested “I’ll explain the details later, but the SmokeForge needs feedstock...”
.....then a light dawned.
“And this little guy is just the one to feed it.” she indicated the little dragon robot. “Not to worry Aunty...you won’t have to do any housecleaning..”
Naomi looked at her niece...raised one eyebrow and grinned.
“Well that’s a relief. I can handle The End of The World As We Know It..but cleaning my room is a bit much to ask."
The she laughed.
...........the niece laughed.
...........the little robot laughed too.
it was going to be a good day.
End of Book One : SoulStone
Book Two: TEOTWAWKI
is next
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The Next Episode will be
TEOTWAWKI , # 1 : Prologue
The Previous Episode was
# 129: Bridge Out…
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue
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I'm
@everittdmickey
.
I write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
I have books on Amazon too.
Sometimes I also comment on the news
Sometimes it's hard to tell fiction from the news.
And I laughed too ;-}
Well that's a relief
I can handle the end of soulstone now that I know the end of the world as we know it is just around the corner
please remind me to be impressed when Google's voice dictation can handle proper capitalization
This is a great book sir. I hope you get picked up by a major publisher. You certainly have the goods.
Thanks,
Rick