Chapter 16

By the time Nemesis was ready to join us, the weather had started getting too cold to spend time wandering the streets, so we were pretty much at loose ends until spring came back. After a few weeks of sitting around the house, I was not the only one getting a bad case of "cabin fever." Finally, I couldn't take it any longer! "Look, Guys, I've had it with the weather. I have got to get out and about. What do you say that we head South to Miami or someplace warmer like that?"

I got a chorus of yeas, all except from Martha. She looked downright depressed. "Martha, what's wrong. Aren't you interested in a vacation?"

She immediately brightened up. "Oh, I didn't know that I was included. Certainly, I would like to go to Florida. Would you believe that I have never been south of New York City? I would love to see what it is like in a vacation town."

We talked about the various ways of traveling and what we wanted to take with us. Well, to no one's surprise, everyone wanted to take his uniform and weapons so that we could experience night life our way. That, of course, eliminated travel by any means but private vehicle, so we made a local Lincoln dealer happy by buying a new SUV with all the trimmings for our travel. I paid cash for one on the lot, so we had no wait except for the few hours of dealer prep.

We drove home, me driving the SUV and Martha driving the old Sable. We were keeping the Sable for use around home, but we planned to travel in comfort! Believe it or not, but it took us three days to figure what we would take and to get it packed so that it would not be spotted during our trip or when we unloaded the SUV at a hotel. We girls decided that we would not take any civilian clothes beyond what we needed to get to Florida. We were going on a shopping spree after we got there so that we could have all the fashionable things we wanted in the quantity we wanted. Hell, I had the money to afford all that, so why not?

Our trip to Florida was uneventful until we got to North Carolina. Chris was driving and the rest of us were dozing in our seats. After a while, all scenery looks pretty much the same, especially since Lady Bird Johnson had pushed through her "green tunnel" legislation years ago so that there was nothing to see from the Interstate but trees. I wondered if there really was an increase in accidents because drivers went to sleep without the mental stimulation of something to look at besides those damned trees.

Anyway, we were tooling along at about 75 MPH when three large cars approached us from our rear. They had to be going in the neighborhood of 100 MPH to catch us, but catch us, they did. Like any sane individual, Chris had been driving in the right lane since there was no other traffic near us. The first car in line of the three pulled over in front of us, the second car remained more or less beside us, and the third car pulled up behind us.

These guys were too close to be considered friendly, so Chris woke us up and warned us of trouble brewing. Once they had us boxed in, all three cars started slowing down, forcing us to slow down with them. Chris tooted the horn a couple of times, but was ignored, so he quit bothering. We were going quite slow by the time we came to a minimal sort of rest stop. There was simply a turnoff to a very small parking lot and a Porta-Potty style restroom. There were not even any vending machines, so we knew that nobody was likely to stop at this place except in emergency.

The three cars forced us off to the rest stop and pinned us at the back of the parking area. The car on Chris' side was so close that he could not open his door more than and inch or two. Six men got out of the three cars and walked toward the passenger side where I was sitting. I dropped my window an inch or so and asked, "What do you want from us?"

All I got for an answer was some laughs, and one man pulled a knife. Well, that was all I needed to know what to do. We all had our batons handy, since nobody would have recognized them as weapons, and I picked up mine with my left hand. The man with the knife reached for the door to open it, but I beat him to it. I used my right hand to push the door open. I slammed the door open into his reaching hand, and I think that I hit him hard enough to break every finger on his left hand. He screamed in pain, and I think that the other thugs were shocked by the fact that he screamed instead of one of their victims.

I followed through with the opening door and smashed it into his face, breaking his nose and toppling him back away from me. I boiled out of the SUV and was followed by everybody else. Even Martha had a baton, but she was not quite as fast as the rest of us. Because he couldn't open his own door, Phobos had to come out on my side of the SUV, but he was ready to rumble as soon as he hit the ground.

The fight was now five-on-five, and the thugs didn't have a chance. Broken arms and legs put them out of action in only a few seconds. Shit, this was too much! I dug out my tools of the trade and went to work on our assailants. I stapled hands to ankles and cut their clothes away. We were a little short of smelling salts, but I rationed it around and just made do with what we had.

I invited Martha to crush the balls, since she had never before had the opportunity. Martha almost literally jumped at the chance, and did a little dance with every ball she crushed. These thugs had no idea who they had stumbled upon. I did the penisectomy on each one and stuffed the severed penis up his rectum. We removed a big toe, and I finished up with the nails in the elbows and knees. Mary used the soldering iron to pen "RAPE" on every forehead. I made sure that they were all awake during the whole experience. A call to 911 required some explanation, but I finally made the operator understand that there were six wounded men, and the Highway Patrol was going to need to remove three cars. I was sure that none of the thugs had noticed our license plate number, and we rolled them so that they were facing away from the SUV when we drove away.

I congratulated Martha on her performance. She had been practicing along with Mary. We had decided that, for her own protection, Martha should learn to defend herself, and she had done a good job. Of course, she was not as fast as we younger people, but she was plenty fast enough for self defense against clubs and knives. Nobody had a good defense against guns.

We made USA Today with that escapade. It seems that the thugs we encountered had made a practice of preying on tourists. They had not murdered anybody, but they had robbed and raped everybody they could catch. We had not dropped any cards this time, but somebody at the newspaper made the connection with our MO (modus operandi) and credited the job to the "Nyx Gang."

That really livened up the trip and renewed our interest in the vacation. There was nothing else interesting on the trip, but we felt that the trip was already worthwhile. Naturally, by the time we had decided on this trip, all of the most desirable hotel rooms had been booked. We wound up taking rooms in a motel near the airport. At that, only two rooms were available. At least, one of the rooms had two queen beds, so Mary and Martha shared one, and Jerry had the other. We all joked that Jerry would be willing to let Martha sleep alone if she really wanted to.

We three girls went shopping while Chris got on the phone looking for something available right on the beach. It took him all day, but he finally came up with a penthouse suite with four bedrooms and three bathrooms in a five-star hotel. It was damned expensive, but we could afford it, so he took it for the three weeks that it was available.

We showed up that afternoon back at the motel. After a short fashion show, we dressed for dinner and went out to a restaurant recommended by the motel staff. This time, we had a reservation, so there was no problem for us to get a table, especially when Chris flashed a $50 tip for the maitre d'. I think that we had the best table in the room.