Juggernaut Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 6652

  Hillsborough, NJ 08844

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  Juggernaut

  Copyright © 2015 by Amelia C. Gormley

  Cover art: Kanaxa, www.kanaxa.com

  Editor: Danielle Poiesz

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-282-0

  First edition

  August, 2015

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-283-7

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  They helped destroy the world. Now they have to survive the new one.

  For rentboy Nico Fernández, it’s a simple job: seduce a presidential advisor to help cement approval to launch Project Juggernaut. He’s done similar work for General Logan McClosky before, and manipulating people for his favorite client beats the hell out of being trafficked for slave wages in some corporate brothel.

  Zach Houtman feels called to work with the most vulnerable outcasts of society. But his father, the Reverend Maurice Houtman, insists that Zach work for him instead as he runs for Senate. Zach reluctantly agrees, but is horrified to see his father leaving behind Christ’s mandate of love and mercy to preach malicious zealotry and violence instead. Zach even starts to suspect his father is working with fundamentalist terrorists.

  When Project Juggernaut accidentally unleashes a deadly plague that claims billions of lives, Nico and Zach are thrown together, each bearing a burden of guilt. With only each other for safety and solace, they must make their way through a new world, one where the handful of people left alive are willing to do anything—and kill anyone—to survive.

  For Paul and Tristan, whose never-ending support and faith in me makes it all possible.

  And for Chris, whose hours and hours of tireless and brilliant brainstorming made this book happen.

  About Juggernaut

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader

  Also by Amelia C. Gormley

  About the Author

  LATE MARCH

  The rains had abated to a persistent but bearable patter that rapped against the car’s windows as it wound up into the Blue Ridge Mountains. The winds had died down enough that it was once again safe to venture out of doors, but the damage Hurricane Lilith had wrought on Virginia was readily apparent in the downed power lines and fallen tree branches lining the road. The Commonwealth was still tabulating the toll in both lives and dollars, but whatever it ended up being, it would be too damned much.

  Of course, federal relief for the disaster would be considerably easier to get out here. The debris and damaged utilities would inconvenience politicians fleeing DC’s sweltering heat in the summer to come. Other areas smashed by the catastrophic storm would be shit out of luck.

  “We’ve got about a half hour until we reach the cabin, Mr. Costas,” the driver informed Nico over his shoulder. “If you wanted some time to watch the news, you might do it now.”

  Nico smiled with genuine warmth. General McClosky’s people were always friendly beyond mere professional courtesy, which wasn’t something he could say for the staff employed by some of his clients. He never got that cold, I’m looking down my nose at you but it’s not my place to say anything vibe from anyone when he had a contract with the general. And there was no question that the driver knew exactly what services “Octavio Costas” performed for McClosky; he was, after all, the one who had to clean the upholstery and air out the car whenever their contracts involved travel.

  “Thank you, Darrin.”

  “How’s your thesis going?” Darrin asked as Nico tucked his memory cards and projection glasses into his bag and tidied up the back of the car, where he’d been working for several hours.

  “Slowly. How’s yours?”

  He caught Darrin’s grimace in the rearview mirror. “Public course servers and connections were damaged in the storm,” he answered. “Everything has been offline for weeks. The only students getting any work done are the ones who can pay first-tier tuition. Apparently their servers are up and running just fine.”

  Nico sighed and shook his head. Due to setbacks like this, Darrin had been working on his degree for as long as Nico had been seeing the general as a client—some six years now. Each delay meant his degree took longer, and he was paying for more terms than should have been necessary to finish it.

  “I’m sorry,” Nico murmured.

  Darrin shrugged. “Not your doing. It’s not like I plan to stop working for the general, anyway. Finishing it is mostly a point of pride at this point.”

  Reading between the lines, it sounded to Nico like Darrin was giving up, or at least contemplating it. There was nothing he could say to that. The fact was, Nico could afford first-tier, private university tuition and all the preferential treatment it entailed, and both he and Darrin knew it.

  “Anyway,” Darrin continued, “if you want to watch the news, go ahead.”

  “Thanks,” he said again, and Nico raised the privacy partition. “Display,” he called. A heads-up display appeared on the partition. “Video. News. Politics,” he instructed. An image quickly came into focus on the HUD, revealing the familiar face of one of the ubiquitous Sunday-morning pundits, Daniel McNary.

  “Here with us now is the Reverend Maurice Houtman, communications director for the Righteous Word Party. Reverend, with this latest wave of attack
s, accusations are once again being leveled at the RWP, claiming the Righteous Action League is the terrorist arm of your party, operating with the RWP’s knowledge and cooperation. How does the RWP respond to this?”

  “The same as we always have, Mr. McNary.” Even through the video screen, Houtman’s eyes burned with a zealot’s fire and the smile on his gaunt face stopped just short of smug. “The Righteous Word Party is dedicated to—”

  Houtman’s diatribe—which had all the earmarks of becoming the same sort of sermon that was broadcast to millions of people every Sunday morning from Houtman Ministries mega-cathedral in Indianapolis—was overridden by the chime of a call coming in on Nico’s tablet. He pulled it from his bag and redirected the signal to the left half of the HUD, compressing Houtman’s creepy mug on the right.

  “What’s up, Mom?”

  “You rearranged the schedule.” On the display, Silvia Fernández’s artfully painted lips were pressed together in a tight line, her eyes narrowed with annoyance. Nico allowed himself a moment of amusement, wondering if the rest of the nation—who knew his mother as Marina Costas, owner of the wildly successful escort agency Costas Companions, outspoken advocate for sex worker rights, detractor of the corporate brothel system, and easily the most recognized madam in the western hemisphere—had ever seen her wearing any expression other than a charming smile. Certainly they’d never seen her play the role of mother hen. “Marcus was supposed to have the McClosky job tonight.”

  “McClosky is my client.”

  Silvia dipped her head, acknowledging the point. “For personal engagements, certainly, but this is one of his other jobs.”

  “All the more reason for me to handle it.”

  “Marcus has taken special jobs for Logan before.”

  Nico blew out an impatient breath. “I prefer to do it myself.”

  “Nicolás—”

  “Is there a reason you don’t want me to take this job, Mother?” he demanded sharply.

  Silvia sighed. “The information Logan gave me made it seem like it wouldn’t be very pleasant. To the point where it seemed like he would rather I assign it to someone else.”

  “Well, wasn’t that considerate of him?” Nico smiled softly. “I appreciate that the general was thinking of me, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s my client and we shouldn’t be distributing these special jobs to our other employees if we can avoid it. I don’t mind if it’s not the most enjoyable evening I’ve ever passed.”

  Silvia’s eyes narrowed again, this time with an assessing look. “You don’t have to prove anything to Logan, you know.”

  “Don’t worry, Mother. I’m not in love with General McClosky.” He rolled his eyes, flicking a glance at the right side of the HUD where another talking head was heatedly countering something the Reverend Houtman had said.

  “Of course not.” Silvia smiled with open amusement. “I know you’re not that foolish, and if you were, you’d never have another engagement with him again. But I do think you very much want to impress him, for whatever reason.”

  Nico shrugged uncomfortably. “He’s been a good friend to me. To us. And my point remains: the fewer people we involve in these special jobs of his, the better. I’m fine doing it myself.” Nico reached for the controls on the armrest and turned up the volume on the talk show. “Are you watching McNary?” he asked, changing the subject.

  On the left side of the display, he saw his mother reach for her own controls. “I am now.”

  “He’s talking about the attack on the Buffalo Yes on 46 campaign office.”

  Houtman was back to pontificating. “—bringing the Lord back into our system of government and overcoming the corrupting and immoral influences in our society by peaceful and legal means.”

  Nico suppressed a snort. Houtman’s moral stance would be a lot more convincing if most of the funding for the RWP’s campaign against legalizing independent sex work didn’t come from the corporate brothels. For obvious reasons, enabling sex workers to operate as independent, contracted service personnel—which Costas escorts already did in states where it was legal—wasn’t a notion the brothels approved of. Because God forbid whores might work for something more than a starvation wage, operate outside of facilities that claimed most of their income in “fees” for leasing and managing their work space, schedule their appointments as though they weren’t on an assembly line, or have the right to refuse service to abusive clients.

  Beside Houtman’s image on the HUD, it was Silvia’s turn to roll her eyes. “It’s all well and good for McNary to ask the question, but the RWP has too many highly placed supporters for any serious investigation of their connection to the Righteous Action League to get off the ground.”

  Nico shrugged. “Someone is shunting money to the RAL, and it’s damned convenient that their targets just happen to be whoever is the subject of Houtman and the RWP’s rants du jour.”

  Until last year, the league had only carried out their attacks on reproductive clinics and shelters for queer youth. Then they had branched out to hit the administrative offices for grassroots organizations trying to get sex work out of the hands of corporate brothels. Since Costas Companions was making significant contributions to those campaigns, and Silvia was acting as a spokesperson for them, this impacted Nico’s livelihood directly.

  “So the RWP condemns these attacks?” McNary prompted on the display as Nico and his mother fell silent.

  He smiled at the screen, letting his eyes roam over McNary’s chiseled jaw and piercing eyes. No political pundit had any business being so gorgeous. Unfortunately, according to all the rumors, he was completely devoted to his wife. Of course, many of Nico’s clientele were attached to similar rumors, but he had been to five functions at which McNary had been in attendance and he’d never gotten so much as a lingering glance from the guy.

  McNary was also damned good at not letting people on his show off the hook when their responses reeked of bullshit, which made him a veritable treasure among pundits, as well as Nico’s favorite fix for his political-talk-show addiction.

  Idly checking his immaculate trousers for lint or wrinkles, Nico flicked his gaze to the display as the reverend tilted his head in a half shrug, his expression obnoxiously complacent. “The RWP is in no way complicit in these attacks, nor do we know who the perpetrators are.”

  “Sure you don’t,” Nico muttered, and the corner of Silvia’s mouth lifted.

  “It doesn’t matter what they say, mijo,” she murmured. “Momentum is on our side. People can overlook the human rights abuses in the retail and industrial sectors, but once you add in the element of sex work, that brand of wage slavery becomes human trafficking, and that’s a lot harder to ignore.”

  Nico chuckled. “That’s nice. Was that from the speech you gave at the last Yes on 46 fundraiser?”

  “Paraphrased,” Silvia said with a blithe wave of her hand. “The point stands.”

  Yes, the point stood. Getting corporate brothels legalized some fifty years ago had been an easy sell; they’d campaigned on a public health and safety platform, claiming it would reduce crime and the spread of sexually transmitted infections. But the more the brothels began operating like the industrial tenements, the more obvious the human rights abuses in the whole system became. The sex element got people’s attention like nothing else did, which made it harder for the brothels to resist grassroots efforts to legalize independent sex work. That was why most of the arguing against legalization efforts was coming from religious fundamentalists like Houtman, quietly backed by the brothels. And now, apparently, the extremist terrorist groups were getting in on the act.

  “How is security at the fundraisers you’ve been doing?” Nico asked with a frown. “Do you think they could—”

  “Not likely.” Silvia shook her head. “We’ve got the entertainment industry taking our part. Too many notable names at those events. They wouldn’t dare.”

  That was true. Attending awards ceremonies and opening nights w
ith a Costas Companions escort on one’s arm had become a status symbol, a way for cinema, televid, and music bigwigs to revel in being shocking and controversial. Some flaunted the fact that they were hiring a rentboy or call girl for the evening, while others truly appreciated the services Costas Companions offered beside the obvious. His mother’s contractors were trained to provide far more than just a sexual experience.

  Nico was about to caution his mother to be careful of her security anyway when something Houtman was bloviating about on the HUD caught his attention.

  “—Nevertheless, it must be said that one need only look at the targets to discern the hand of God behind the tragedies. The United States has become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. The more corrupt and dissolute we become as a society, the more often we will see the Lord allowing His servants to smite the wicked in His name . . .”

  Nico’s jaw slowly dropped. “Oh my God. Did he just . . .?”

  Zach choked, coughing as he stared in disbelief at the video monitor. He frantically looked down at the computerized notepad of talking points they had gone over before the broadcast. The reverend was off script. As usual.

  A headache began to throb in Zach’s temples, and his stomach started to burn. Fumbling, he tucked the notepad under his arm and dug into his inner breast pocket, withdrawing a prescription bottle. He stuck one of the quick-dissolve tablets under his tongue and resumed perusing his notepad, waiting for the pain to ease before he put the bottle away. By then, his father had doubled down on his hardline rhetoric, prompting Dan McNary to call for a commercial break, ending the reverend’s segment.

  Zach produced a handkerchief, holding it out before his father arrived at his side. The reverend dabbed his sweating brow, and Zach saw the disgruntled look in his peripheral vision.

  “Look up and greet me properly, Zacharias. Don’t just fling a rag at me like you can’t be bothered.”

  “Sorry, sir.” Zach lifted his gaze from the notepad and fixed it on his father. “I was just checking our notes. You veered off the talking points.”

  The reverend spared an indolent shrug. “The audience wants to hear something exciting, something that will get them charged about the message we’re putting out.”