Hunter of the Dead

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  Two

  All eyes in Phillip’s Fill-Up were locked on the owner of the Saab that had just pulled up. Nico Salazar, who at twenty seemed way too young to already be a shift manager, stood behind the cash register grinding his teeth. Carter Price, who at fifty-something, seemed way too old to not at least be a manager, stood behind the deli case polishing his hands with a dirty rag.

  “You think he’s coming in?” Nico asked.

  “I don’t care what this guy does,” Price replied, continuing to punish his knuckles with the rag. “At midnight I turn into a pumpkin.”

  Nico bit his upper lip. Saab guy was rich. Well, maybe not “rich.” “Rich enough” seemed like a more adequate description. He was dressed to impress…well, someone, but obviously not a convenience store shift manager. Right now he was alternating between fiddling with the gas pump and glancing up at the store entrance, possibly making sure the lights were still on. Whether he decided to come in or not still seemed to be a coin toss.

  “Your shift’s not over ‘til the last customer leaves.”

  Price grunted in disgust and tossed his rag off somewhere.

  “That asshole is not going to want a sandwich.”

  “He might,” Nico replied, dragging the second word out into a lengthy sing-song, “and you can’t clean up until all the customers are gone.”

  “The hell I can’t.”

  Price began disassembling the deli slicer. For an old dude, Price was pretty strong. He had a rough look to him: cut, like maybe he worked out, but more like prison lifting than to keep himself pretty. Prison was where he had no doubt learned to lift, after all.

  Nico could hardly picture Price shaving, but he always seemed to have just a day or two of stubble, so he must shave sometimes. His hair was clipped close enough to bald that Nico could never quite identify the color.

  Strangest of all, Price’s right wrist had been bandaged for a while. Considering the nature of that sort of wound, Nico had never pried into it. But now that they’d been working together a while, he was starting to wonder if the bandages weren’t an affectation. If he had been suicidal once, it should have long since healed by now. Of course, he might have been a cutter. Price seemed too old to be a cutter, but either way it was simply yet another conversation Nico never ever wanted to have with an employee.

  “Don’t do it. You’ll curse us. Now he really will want a sandwich.”

  Price groaned and threw his arms up in the air before finally settling into his customary slouch against the sink to wait it out. “The Ballad of Whether We Can Close Up or Not” was one that seemed to play every night at about this time.

  As Saab guy began to pump, the bell indicating the back door opening rang. Nico glanced up at the security monitor. Jackie, the delivery lady from the bakery, waved at the camera as she wheeled the next day’s donuts in.

  “Still warm,” Jackie announced when she hit the floor, “You boys want one?”

  Price licked his chops and held out his hands in a clamshell.

  “Toss me a Boston Cream, Jax.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” she replied, as she began stacking the donuts into their case for the fast-approaching morning shift. “Come get it yourself.”

  “Maybe I will come and get it,” Price replied, and strutted toward the donut case.

  Flirting again.

  Jackie was a real nice lady. She was a tad overweight, but who could blame someone who carried pastries everywhere they went for a living? It wasn’t like she was pumpkin-shaped, either, she just had a little more junk in the trunk than Nico preferred. Otherwise she was blonde, pretty, and about Price’s age.

  The two flirted shamelessly with each other every night. It had gotten to the point where Nico had been forced to check whether she wore a ring. (Price decidedly did not.) Now he was just wondering when Price would decide it was time to shit or get off the pot. He could do worse than to date Jackie, and Price had never given a hint that he had a girlfriend or much of a social life at all. Nico idly wanted that for the two of them, but had no real desire to intervene in the lives of two grown-ass adults. He had enough trouble dealing with his own (lack of) love life.

  “Nothing for you, Nico?”

  Nico shook his head. Jackie left her cart by the donut case and sidled up to lean against the counter opposite Nico.

  “What are you two watching?”

  Price returned from the donut case to behind the deli counter and began stuffing his face with cream and chocolate.

  “We’re trying to decide whether Picky Sandwich here is going to want mustard, mayo, or truffles.”

  “Oh, hell no!” Price shouted, rising to his feet, “That’s not a picky sandwich eater. I’ll tell you who that is. That’s a Cigarette Dick. He wants some Benson and Hedges Slim Ultra-Lights or some shit.”

  Jackie clucked her tongue and went back to going about her business.

  “You two are crazy.”

  Nico’s eyes fluttered over to the wall clock, set perpetually slow by the owner, though the employees always ignored it and went by their phones anyway. Even the clock was quickly closing on midnight.

  With a single ding of the front door, Nico’s hopes of getting out on time were dashed. When the Saab owner juked toward the cash register instead of the deli, he tried to ignore Price’s childish celebratory dance.

  “Parliament Light 100s,” Cigarette Dick announced, without so much as glancing in Nico’s direction.

  Nico looked up at his row upon row of assembled brands. Notably absent was the obscure(ish) brand in question.

  God damn it.

  “I’m sorry, sir, we seem to be out. Would Parliament Lights be all right? Or Parliament Regular 100s?”

  Cigarette Dick finally deigned to look Nico in the face.

  “Parliament. Light. 100s. Shall I repeat in Espanol, amigo? Parliamento Light-o. Uno hundred-o.”

  Nico kept his face a mask of professionalism. He knew the score with people like Cigarette Dick. Scowl, and they’d yell at you for having a bad attitude. Smile, and they’d yell at you for being a smartass.

  “Again, sir,” he said, forcing his voice to remain as static as his face, “We are out.”

  “Why don’t you go check? Don’t you know how to do your job?”

  Nico reached up and lowered the plastic scaffolding where they normally kept the Parliament Light 100s. Never before had he wished so much that a lone pack had gotten stuck up in the apparatus somewhere. But for the second time he saw that there were none.

  “Okay, I just checked again, sir. We are out.” Somehow he refrained from adding “still.”

  Cigarette Dick folded his arms and tapped his shoe.

  “Why don’t you go check in the back? Like I asked you to, twice? Like it’s your job to do?”

  Nico decided to swallow his explanation about how they didn’t keep any secret stores of cigarettes in the back, when they arrived they filled them up at the cash register, and on a Sunday night, right before the next shipment arrived on Monday morning, sometimes they’d be out.

  “Of course, sir,” Nico said, “I’ll go see if a pack fell out or something. Excuse me.”

  Nico locked the register and walked briskly to the back of the store. Just because he so badly wanted there to be a mislaid pack somewhere, he checked the empty, collapsed boxes of cigarette cartons. Of course, as he had already known, there were no cigarettes which had gone astray. He glanced up at the security camera and made sure that Cigarette Dick didn’t attempt to go over the counter or anything. Nico would’ve been severely shocked if Carter would’ve made any attempt to stop even a blatant robbery.

  Nico checked the time on his phone. Customers like Cigarette Dick considered taking the appropriate amount of time to do anything as a personal affront. It had to be long enough to seem thorough, but not long enough to seem like their time was being wasted.

  Three minutes.

  Nico sighed and glanced at the staff television. Black and white. Nothing good was on.
Of course not. Mr. al-Azif, the owner of the gas station (whose first name was rather emphatically not Phillip) refused to pay for cable, so all they got was the God channel and a channel that played reruns from the “best” of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Sometimes Price got really into the Golden Oldie channel, but for the most part the employees just ignored the pointless old box.

  He checked his phone again.

  It’s been long enough, I suppose.

  Shaking his head in defeat, Nico exited the back room and lifted the leaf to enter the register area. He straightened his bright green polo shirt out and gazed into Cigarette Dick’s eyes. He shook his head in false commiseration.

  “So sorry, sir. None in the back either.”

  Like I already fucking said.

  “You know what, kid? I want to talk to your manager.” Cigarette Dick jabbed a finger at Price. “Hey, you!”

  Price pointed his own thumb at himself by way of response, his mouth too full of chocolate and donut filling to say anything.

  “Yeah, you, shitbird. I want to report this kid.”

  Price swallowed his ill-gotten pastry.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought you said. Hey, Nico, this guy wants to report you. So write yourself up or something.”

  “Please finish cleaning up, Carter.”

  Price pretended to salute with two fingers, but busied himself at the sink. Cigarette Dick raised an eyebrow. He looked Nico up and down.

  “You’re the manager?”

  “Shift manager, yes.”

  “And this fifty-year-old guy works for you? Hey, shitbird, what are you, an ex-con or something?”

  Nico was mortified to see Price pull a sudsy paring knife out of the sink. Water and bubbles from the knife dripped to the deli floor.

  “Yeah, actually, I am. You want to make something of it, you…”

  Jackie stepped away from her cart and positioned herself surreptitiously in between Price and the customer. Her hand was on her hip, where Nico knew she kept a stun gun. She did late-night deliveries and didn’t take chances with being mugged or raped.

  “Carter!” Nico had no idea what Price had gone up the river for, but he didn’t want to witness a repeat if it was a violent offense. “Sir, I’m happy to take your complaint, but I won’t have you abusing me or my staff.”

  Cigarette Dick paused long enough to form a nasty expression on his lips when the front doorbell dinged.

  “I’m sorry, I know the lights are on, but we’re closed. What the fuck is that?”

  Nico’s expression must have turned to sheer horror because even Cigarette Dick turned around to look at the newcomer. Nico had no idea what he was looking at. The thing that stood on their plastic mat was a hulk of a creature. Even slouched over with its knuckles on the floor it was taller than Cigarette Dick’s easy six feet.

  Its skin was solid gray and its body was hairless. It could’ve been a man once, but its entire lower jaw was missing, its ears were long and flappy like batwings, and its eyes were solid yellow.

  “What are you supposed to be?” Cigarette Dick asked, “Is there a comic book convention in town or something?”

  Nico’s heart stopped fluttering as he realized the man was probably right. It was just a costume. But in the store’s bright lights it seemed so real.

  With two steps the thing was on top of Cigarette Dick. It reached out and with the ease of a delinquent child pulling the wings off a fly, ripped off both of Cigarette Dick’s arms in one smooth motion.

  “Holy fuck!”

  Nico jumped back, away from the grisly display. With the monstrosity closer to him than before, he could see its tongue lolling out of its bottomless mouth. The teeth it retained in its upper jaw were sharp like knives. The customer had fallen silent, his mouth open in a soundless scream.

  Jackie leaped forward and fired her stun gun at the creature. Two tiny chunks of metal flew out of the gun and 50,000 volts shot through it. Unfazed, it turned and buried its face into hers.

  Unsure what to do, Nico slapped the silent alarm. He’d never had to use it before and didn’t know how quickly the cops would show up. Suddenly a piercing whistle cut through the air and Nico and the creature both looked up to see Price standing on top of the deli display, a half-assembled meat slicer in his hands whirring away.

  “Hey, asshole,” Price said loudly, “why don’t you try tangling with me?”

  The creature hissed and let Jackie’s lifeless body drop to the floor. Nico noticed with alarm that her face had been half chewed away while in the thing’s godless embrace. With a single bound it leapt into the air at Price, though he had to be eight feet higher than it, positioned as he was on top of the deli display.

  With a perfection that beggared belief, Price swung the meat slicer and caught the monster full in its neck. Nico watched in horror as Price held the meat slicer steady and the thing’s jump halted. It seemed to be standing in mid-air as the slicer spun, making a hash of its face and neck but surprisingly casting off no blood, ichor, or other bodily fluids.

  The thing dropped to the ground and Price flung the heavy meat slicer after it. He caught Nico’s eyes.

  “Are the gas pumps on?”

  Nico’s mouth worked, but he found he couldn’t bring any words forth.

  “Nico!”

  “What?”

  “Turn on the fucking gas pumps!”

  Price leapt from the deli case and crouched as he landed in front of the register. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from a shelf of overpriced office supplies and began ripping the packaging off. Nico stumbled to his feet and flicked the buttons for the fuel. Price held out his hand.

  “Come on, come on!”

  The thing began to rise from its position, and Nico watched in horror as its mangled face began to reassemble itself mere seconds after being torn to shreds. When all the pumps were on he took Price’s hand and felt the older man pull him over the counter. Together they hurried out into the parking lot.

  The Saab stood at its fueling spot, the only car in the customer lot. Price grabbed the hose out of one of the pumps, depressed the handle, secured it with a few layers of duct tape, then dropped it to the ground so it began spraying a puddle of gasoline. He repeated the process at the next hose, and gestured to Nico to do the same.

  “Is your car here?”

  “Um, no,” Nico said, shaking his head, “I take the bus.”

  “Shit.”

  Price dug into his pocket and tossed Nico a set of keys which he nearly fumbled, but caught before they splashed into the ever-widening pool of gasoline.

  “Go and pull my car around. You know how to drive stick?”

  “What about Jackie and that guy?”

  “They’re dead, kid! Go and get my car!”

  Nico nodded and stumbled, knocking his knee badly against one of the pumps before getting a handle on his feet and pounding off towards the back lot where the employees parked. Even if it hadn’t been the only car in the lot, Price’s mint green 1963 Cadillac convertible would’ve been impossible to miss.

  He stumbled, his messed-up knee hurting a lot worse than he had expected, and fumbled through Price’s keychain before finding the right one. The car door was heavy and hard to open, and Nico had only ever driven standard once before, but somehow he managed to get the prehistoric behemoth moving and pulled it back around to the front.

  The creature had emerged from the Fill-Up, and to Nico’s horror it looked exactly as it had the moment it had walked in – not healthy, exactly, but utterly unharmed despite getting a faceful of deli slicer. It hissed at Price, who was backing away from the entrance to the store, and subtly motioning for Nico to keep his distance. Price’s green Fill-Up polo was off, his rock-hard abs on display.

  Not bad for an old guy.

  Price had wrapped his shirt around one of the window squeegees that was stationed at every fuel pump.

  “Yeah, I recognize you, motherfucker,” Price said loudly. “You’re supposed to be one of The Damned,
right?”

  The creature – the “Damned,” Price had named it – its ears rose, pointing nearly straight up. So it was intelligent, if horrifying. Its tongue fluttered, as though it were trying to speak with its chapless mouth. It stepped towards him, more cautiously than it had been acting up until now.

  Is that monstrosity really afraid of Carter Price?

  “What does it mean that you’re loose? All bets are off now? Cicatrice is gunning for us?”

  Then, in a night full of awful noises, Nico heard the most heart-rapingly awful sound of his entire life. A noise came from The Damned’s throat that it took him a moment to identify as a gruesome chuckle. It shook its head from side to side.

  Price began to back up, surreptitiously moving closer to the car. The Damned slowly followed after him, and Nico watched with mounting anxiety as it stepped into the slowly broadening puddle of gasoline.

  “So you don’t know me, huh? This is just a co-inky-dink?”

  The Damned nodded; its soulless eyes almost mirthful. Price nodded right back.

  “Yeah, well, you might be king shit of the vampires – or that’s what they say anyway – but I know one thing that kills every vampire dead. Even king shits.”

  The Damned paused and glanced skyward, furrowing its brow and squinching its eyes tight as though looking for something. Then its gaze returned to Price and it made a circular motion with its arm.

  The sun’s not rising anytime soon, it seemed to be saying.

  “No, not that,” Price said, opening his Zippo and sparking it alight with a single flip of his wrist, “this.”

  Price lit the makeshift torch he had fabricated out of his shirt and the squeegee. From the speed that the whole mess burst into flames, Nico realized he must have dipped it into the pool of gasoline.

  “Oh, fuck,” he whispered under his breath.

  Price flung the torch in a spinning arc through the air and turned to run toward the car faster than any man his age should have been able. Nico’s knuckles turned white gripping the wheel, and he was certain his heart stopped for the entire duration of the torch’s arc through the air.