Chapter 2

Nemesis returned to work as soon as Jane finished a round with Doug. That had taken place just a short time after supper, and the session had lasted nearly two hours. Doug was exhausted, but Jane was so pumped up that she could hardly wait to get out after bad guys. Did orgasms have that same effect on other women, she wondered.

Nemesis drove her SUV and parked it at the same place as the previous night. She was going to hit the same territory to answer a question she felt nagging at her. Was it her imagination, or were there more muggings lately? Hopefully, she could get an answer by patrolling the same neighborhood for a few consecutive days.

The previous night, Nemesis had halted or prevented 13 muggings in a relatively small area. This was a hell of a lot of them, and it just didn't seem to fit in with the laws of chance. She wondered what could be behind so many happening on the same evening. Normally, muggings happened after dark, but these were coming earlier in the day, and they were lasting later in the evening, actually up to midnight, and that was way too late for this neighborhood. She could believe the late timing if this were the theater or restaurant district, but this was a poor neighborhood, and few people were out as late as midnight.

It was 8:24 PM, and there was her first mugging of the evening. A man had just gotten off a bus and was walking past an alley not 50 feet from the bus stop. Two men stepped out of the alley and forced the man back into it. The roof that Nemesis was on was low enough that she jumped down and landed on the shoulders of one of the muggers. Of course, the impact knocked him down and the crack of his head against the paving kept him out of action.

That left one mugger to deal with, but he had the presence of mind to put his knife point against the victim's neck. When she landed on the first man's shoulders, Nemesis used her acrobatic training to leap off and land in a roll on the ground. From this backward roll, she sprang to her feet and faced the other thug. However, the knife against the victim's neck prevented direct action, so she turned and ran around the corner of the building.

This disconcerted the remaining mugger, and he tried to see where she had disappeared to. To the complete surprise of the mugger, Nemesis had run around the building and was now at his back. The knife was no longer at the victim's throat, so it was safe for Nemesis to act.

She poked the mugger from behind with her stick jammed into his backbone just below his rib cage. The force was on the order of 450 psi (pounds per square inch) and it strained the mugger's spine between two vertebrae. He fell, and Nemesis kicked him in the throat to crush his windpipe. She did the same to the other mugger who was just beginning to wake up. She made sure that the potential victim was OK and dropped one of her cards beside the first mugger before disappearing again, this time to the roof.

Dammit, it looked like Nemesis was going to have to get an earlier start tomorrow. The muggers were starting too early for her convenience, but she would just have to adapt. Oh, well, she could handle the strain!

Nemesis decided to follow the bus routes to see if the muggings were concentrated near the stops. Aha! It looked like her hunch was paying off. There was a holdup right on the sidewalk of the main street through the neighborhood. Now, that was getting to be outrageous! It was too far away for her to get there in time for her to use her stick, so this looked like a job for her Glock.

The mugger was using a gun and not a knife, so she had to be a bit more circumspect about when she fired. Nemesis got into position and waited for the robbery to be over. The whole thing went quickly, since the victim was a woman and the robber took only her purse. Nemesis fired as the mugger was turning away. That way the woman was reasonably safe from an accidental discharge from the robber's gun. The man had turned far enough so that the bullet hit him in his left shoulder blade and shattered that. Flecks of bullet and shards of bone continued into his lung. He fell, of course, and the woman froze in her tracks.

She was in a state of shock when Nemesis arrived. Nemesis scooped up the woman's purse before it got blood on it, and she helped the poor woman to be seated on the sidewalk, leaning against the wall of the building. Nemesis then called 911 for EMS help for the woman, dropped a card, and disappeared over the roof of the building. Actually, she stayed around until the EMS ambulance arrived.

That didn't take long and Nemesis was again free to look for muggers. Four blocks later and around a corner, she saw the more classic mugging. Three men were in an alley. One man was being held by another while the third one battered him with his fists. The first man was released and fell to the ground before Nemesis could get there, so she decided to take the easy way out and shoot the two muggers. That she did before she ran to check on the beating victim. He was in very bad shape, so she did not hesitate to call for 911 medical assistance.

The victim's lower jaw was broken, along with his nose and a cheekbone. Not only that, but it was probably true that he had several broken ribs. His assailant had been using a knuckleduster to beat the victim, so he was in very bad shape even to the view of a layman. She dropped a card and scooted before the ambulance got there. Man, this was turning into a busy night!

This made six muggers that she had killed so far this night, and she was not through, yet. Nemesis wondered what the TV and newspapers were going to say about this. She was already the target of several bleeding-heart types who wanted her found and stopped before she could kill every one of the crooks in town. Nemesis could not help laughing at their concern for these poor thugs and that the victims were never given a sympathetic thought. Her only conclusion was that some people had very screwed up priorities. Nevertheless, she did have to dodge the cops, even though most of them were in sympathy with what she was doing.

Nemesis had a short dry spell when she did not see any more muggers, and she wondered if she had finished with them for the night. No such luck! She had actually reached the edge of her planned patrol territory and had turned back when she spotted her next mugging.

This time, five teenagers, mixed male and female, were attacking an elderly woman. It was like something out of a Western movie. The teens were dancing around the bewildered woman. She'd been carrying two bags of groceries in her arms when she was accosted. In panic, she had dropped the grocery bags and was now staring at the teens who were circling her.

This did not look like a "normal" mugging, so Nemesis dropped to the ground and approached the circus to try to get some idea of the motive behind the assault. As she approached, Nemesis heard remarks like, "Come on, you old hag, dance with us. You are too old and ugly to live in our space. When was the last time you were fucked? Why don't you die?" and a lot of other, less felicitous, comments.

It seemed to Nemesis that the kids were trying to scare the old woman into a heart attack or the like. Failing that, the boys were going to rape her while the girls cheered them on. Nemesis had heard enough. "ALL RIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH OF THAT SHIT! YOU HAVE 15 SECONDS TO SCATTER! OTHERWISE, YOU ARE DEAD!"

Some of the teens were shocked because they thought they were unobserved. Others were just belligerent. One of the girls shouted, "PISS OFF, YOU BITCH! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, ARREST US?"

"NO! I AM NEMESIS, AND I AM YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE!"

The same girl shouted, "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH US? WE OUTNUMBER YOU FIVE TO ONE! WE'LL CREAM YOUR ASS FOR YOU IF YOU DON'T GET OUT NOW!" While she said that, the girl was waving a section of water pipe that she planned to use as a club.