Hello! Happy new year from me, Matthew, the Matthew behind Bad Books, Good Times! I know Ariel already kicked off the new year, but I wanted to take a minute to say thank you for hanging out with us here in the new decade, where we are still reading Trigger Warning for what has felt like half of my goddamn life.
Trigger Warning: Chapter 32
Previously, Jake got Matthais Foster at gunpoint, only for the surprise twist that his love interest, Professor Natalie Burke, was working with Foster the whole time. Finally, something in this book actually makes sense! Of course their romance based on endlessly complaining about PC culture was too good to be true! It was all a ruse!
“Please, Jake,” she said in a half-whisper. “I really don’t want to hurt you.”
Goddammit, nevermind. She fell in love with Jake and his unapologetic conservative beliefs for real.
“Just tell me one thing: are you really Natalie Burke, or is your name Lucy?”
“I’m Dr. Natalie Burke,” she said. “And I really am a professor of criminal justice. Lucy is just . . .”
Her voice trailed off, as evidently she was at a loss to explain herself.
Meanwhile, all the other students being held hostage in the library are just watching this, wondering why their professor is holding a gun and struggling to explain the concept of a pseudonym, and that that one student they all hate felt like this was the one question he had about the situation.
Matthias Foster addresses Jake by name, surprising Jake, and reveals that they’ve been watching him and testing him the whole time. Jake realizes that this explains who’s been behind the mysterious attacks on him the last few days.
The black-hooded figures hadn’t been Antifa at all.
Jake tests Natalie’s resolve by saying that he could still kill Foster before she kills him. She counters that they’ve all gone too far to back out now, and Jake believes that she really will shoot. Jake puts his gun down, but also assures the reader “he had absolutely no fear of dying”, which is an important thing to keep in mind in these trying times.
“That’s more like it,” Foster said. “I’m glad you listened to reason, Jake. There’s no reason anybody else has to die, anywhere on this campus. We’re not about bloodshed. We just want to make a statement about the cesspool that this country has turned into.”
“And that so-called statement is going to result in you putting a hundred million dollars in your pocket.”
“Well,” Foster said, still grinning, “that’ll help average out the income inequality a little, won’t it?”
I don’t know what’s sadder: that Trigger Warning thinks that this “the 1% shouldn’t have nice things; I should have nice things!” makes sense for a far-left villain’s motivations (note that this is the same motivation as a minor antagonist in the Downton Abbey movie, of all things), or that Trigger Warning thinks that one hundred million dollars is any amount of money whatsoever in terms of affecting political change in America.
The rest of the chapter cuts away to chief of campus police Frank McRainey’s unending (and one-sided) pissing contest with the FBI, which for some reason he is still wildly insulted has been called in to help with the hostage situation on his campus.
[Agent] Graham said. “We need to establish a line of communication into the library. I want to talk to that son of a bitch. But before we do that . . .” He turned to McRainey. “Can we kill the power to the individual buildings[?”]
The FBI agent’s request made McRainey feel a little like he was being shunted aside, but he knew Graham was right.
Seriously, whatever point this book is trying to make about the overreach of federal law enforcement or whatever… this isn’t exactly making its best argument.
“that way the FBI gets credit for anything good that happens, right? As well as most of the media coverage?”
This is our good guy. We’re supposed to sympathize with this man.
The chapter goes on for a weirdly long time about the specifics of going about cutting the power to the campus, which I have helpfully not bothered summarizing.
Trigger Warning: Chapter 33
Back in the library, the lights cut out. Jake seizes his opportunity to disarm Natalie. Foster disappears into the shadows giving the order to his men to kill Jake. Jake also disappears into the shadows. Most of the chapter is Jake running and dodging through the rows of bookshelves, occasionally running into one of Foster’s men and disarming and/or killing them.
It’s mostly a full, dialogue-free and action-filled chapter of… exactly what that sounds like. It’s occasionally almost beautifully tedious:
he switched the gun to his left hand, since the stair railing was on his right
…but it absolutely has its moments:
As he turned toward the stairs, one of Foster’s men emerged from an aisle beyond the metal door. The light from the phone in his left hand splashed over Jake, who slowed down, but only for a second, just long enough to grab a heavy book from the end of a shelf he was passing.
He flung the thick volume at the gunman as hard as he could.
As Jake makes his way through the library, he decides he doesn’t want to actually escape the library, since he’d be powerless to stop Foster once he’s outside, and many people could die once the authorities breach the building. Jake decides that “Taking Foster down from the inside was still the best chance to minimize loss of life,” meaning that we’re finally at the “to fight back, he needs to enlist his fellow classmates to school these special snowflakes in the not-so-liberal art of war” promised/threatened on the back of the book.
The chapter ends as Jake hears gunshots on the other side of a door, realizes someone is in danger, and bursts in “ready to deal out death”.
America!
Am I the only one who is sorta afraid that in the end it will be Jakes righteous alt-right-leaning dong which will make Natalie see the political light and reveal to her that all leftists are evil?
Anyone else getting a badly written fanfic version of Die Hard vibe off this part of the book? The tired, grizzled cop waiting outside and dealing with agents from the FBI, the “joe everyman” – and I use that term liberally – working from inside to take out the “terrorists”?
At this point I’m kind of terrified this will end with Jake screaming “yippee ki yay, Monday to Fridays!” and pushing someone off the top of the library.