by Drew Stepek
HeLLo.
“I got some,” I yelled back into the store.
He didn’t respond.
“I said, I got some.” As I walked back through my path of destruction, I shoved one of the syringes deep into my left boot, making sure the needle cap was tightly screwed on. When I was positive that I had it hidden well enough, I peered my head around the corner.
“Eldritch?” I stepped back out into the store. “Buddy?” I back-stepped so I could see the front of the window. I saw him standing there, reading off of his phone.
I opened up my hand and showed him a bundle of ten or so syringes. “Look, I found them.”
He closed the window and then headed back into the enclosed room.
So I had syringes and cotton; I needed to find some kind of safety pin or paper clip to stir the mixture around. I walked over to the home utilities aisle and sure enough, right next to the sewing kits and shoe polish were safety pins. I tore open the plastic container and grabbed three, slipping them into my pocket.
The door window opened again and I bolted upright.
Eldritch studied me, then said, “The sun is coming soon. We do not even know where we are going to shelter ourselves this day. Please stop playing pass the slipper and come help us find Paulina the medication she needs.”
I grinned. “What the fuck is pass the slipper?”
He slammed the window shut again.
My finger shook as I surveyed the Rx shelves. My eyes were tired and strained from the darkness of the store. I was also dehydrated and completely burnt out. The habit of rubbing my eyes was only making things worse.
“RJ?” Eldritch whispered from a couple of aisles in the back. “Have you found anything yet?”
I squinted. “I’m having a difficult time seeing anything.” I didn’t want to alert him that I was beginning to feel the hunger for heroin. I figured it best that he stayed in the dark, thinking that my body was continuing to break down all the poor man and angel dust that wasn’t so easily metabolizing inside of me. My insides were all contorted from the different flavors of shit and they made my shaking and withdrawal more about desperation than weakness. A kid in a candy store? More like a street rat in an outhouse. I needed to be on top of my murdering game. The Gooch tried to keep me alert.
A wEak vAmpirE is a dEAd vAmpirE.
I dragged my fingernail across the ribbed plastic top of a bottle. “I can’t see shit!”
Eldritch’s flashlight suddenly beamed into my eyes from the end of the aisle. I jumped, startled by the brightness and then lifted my hand in from of me as a shield. “Come on, dude.”
He dropped the light to his side, grabbed Pinball’s hand and headed toward me.
“Jesus, Eldritch.”
He put his finger under my chin and studied my pupils. “Are you able-bodied? You seem extremely rattled and agitated.”
“I’m rattled.” I flicked his finger away. “In the past few days, I have been through an obstacle course of lunacy.”
He continued to study my eyes.
I blinked several times and rolled my eyes around. “I’m fine. We just need to get the kid her meds and then drop her off at this dude’s house.”
“We will still require the aid of the Sixth Street Skulls,” he reminded me.
“And what happens if this other gang has no idea who he is either?” I spit on my fingers a little bit and rubbed it across my eyelashes. “We could just dump her outside the fire station.”
Eldritch shushed me as he signaled toward Pinball. Thankfully, she was yawning and not paying attention to our conversation. He pulled her toward him and adjusted her wig. “We agreed,” he declared.
My eyes were really starting to hurt. The power of the flashlight in my eyes right after I had been squinting for a half hour didn’t agree with my vision. “Why is that? The fire station is a get out of jail free card. Druggy mothers do it every day. It’s pretty close to what my piece of shit rock star mother did for me.”
A tired and cranky Pinball batted away his hand from her head. “Leave it alone,” she said.
He continued. “That is exactly what I worry about.”
I shook the bottle of pills in my hand. “I’m not following.”
“Simply put, I do not know how saturated The Cloth and their alliances are entrenched into the Austin police and fire departments.”
“Goddammit, Eldritch!” I tossed the bottle behind my head. “How fucking deep does this thing go? That priest back in L.A. who kidnapped me, Fat Mac, told me that there are vamps and churches involved in this thing everywhere, but he never said anything about there being several chapters of The Cloth. Are they like the Freemasons?”
He tucked Pinball to his side, covering one of her ears with his hip and the other with his palm. “I suspect that we are being policed in all cities.”
I shook my finger in his face. “This is ridiculous.”
He handed me a flashlight and headed back to his aisle with Pinball latched onto the strap of his jacket. I wanted to wink at her but she turned away too quickly. Probably for the best; old men who kill parents and then wink are creeps.
I tapped the power button on the light. I was supposed to find oxycodone or, if couldn’t locate that, I was looking for any other opioid.
Don’t forgEt About mE.
I stood in front of a wall of different chemical compounds. It was overwhelming for someone like me whose knowledge of drugs was limited to what was cut with baby laxatives or aspirin before I sold it. In my race to find the narcotics first, I came to the realization that everything in front of me was pre-mixed. I shot the flashlight around to survey the room under the observation window and saw a bunch of crates filled with drugs prepared for pickup. I ran over, licked my fingers and started flipping through the envelopes.
In the first crate, I finally came across a prescription for OxyContin, as well as Percocet. They were, for my purposes, the same thing. I ripped open the envelope on the Oxy and stuffed it into the front of my pants, where it slid down to the top of my boot. I shifted and it slipped between my sock and the lip of the leather. I placed the Percocet on the counter for Pinball.
OnE for hEr. OnE for mE.
I shoved my open envelope under the crate to hide it and then went back to flipping thought the scripts as quickly as possible. I heard Eldritch and Pinball making their way to the end of their aisle.
MoRe.
I had been judging their progress by listening to Eldritch’s squeaking creepers. It was a great way to track their movement.
HuRRy.
I proceeded to the next crate. I started flipping through them faster, and I was in luck. I found another envelope with Acetaminophen, another pain reliever from the royal opioid family.
“Excellent idea, RJ,” Eldritch acknowledged. He was directly behind me. I looked up to the top crate. I saw the corner of my hidden envelope sticking out. Hopefully, he couldn’t see it from his perspective above me.
I pointed to the Percocet on the counter and then handed him the Acetaminophen. “Yeah,” I began. “This is what I’ve found so far. Not a goldmine, but not bad either.” I returned to flipping through the envelopes so he wouldn’t see the deception in my eyes. I knew he would most likely resort to frisking me if I didn’t appear busy and helpful.
“This isn’t exactly what we are looking for, RJ,” he pointed out after reading the contents of the envelopes.
I scratched the side of my face and continued to sift through the third crate. “It is what it is. I guess most people pick up their meds the same day they turn in their prescription.”
Thankfully, I found another oxy envelope near the end of the crate. I turned it around over the back of my head so he could see it.
Eldritch yanked the package out of my hand. “Indeed.”
I shuffled around some more to make sure that my bottle was fully secured and undetectable. “Well, at least we got something.” I straightened out and yawned as I stood up. I brushed off my pants and
I looked at him, waiting for his approval.
He once again surveyed all three of my gifts and then down to Pinball. “Are you positive that this is all?”
I put up my hands.
Eldritch handed Pinball the envelopes. “Here you are, Little One.” He unstrapped his satchel from around his shoulder and laid it next to her feet. “Please put them inside this bag.”
He patted her on the head and then turned to face me as I handed her the Dora the Explorer backpack.
Eldritch scratched his chin and continued to fixate on my eyes.
I put my arms up in the air. “What? Are you going to frisk me now, officer?”
In a split second, he plunged his hand at my pelvis and slid it against my nuts, around my ass and then down my legs. He didn’t bother to look down. If I was hiding something in that area, he would have discovered it right away. I looked down at him molesting me and Pinball caught my eye. Her mouth fell open as the backpack fell out of her hands.
“M-M-Mister Eldritch,” she stuttered and her tremoring finger pointed behind me.
“Are the bags inside my bag?” he asked.
“Mister Eldritch!” she screamed.
Eldritch let go of me and we spun around to the front of the pharmacy. There were quivering shadows on the other side of the bulletproof glass that separated the store from drugs.
Shaking and starting to hyperventilate, Pinball lifted up her flashlight. At first, the light beamed back into my eyes off the glass, and I reached to veil my face from the blinding glare. Eldritch smacked the light from her hand, picked her and the knapsack up, and secured her on his shoulders.
As I put my hand down, I saw a sea of ragged overalls leading to the spastic and jarring zombified faces of the McCoys. Their shadows were hyena convulsions throughout the store. Front and center on the other side of the glass was Smiley. He winked at me as the rest raised their pickaxes, shovels, bats, sickles, and whatever other farm tools they had armed themselves with.
Smiley took a step toward the glass and started giggling. His foul teeth and gums were exposed all the way up to his eyes. One of them was nearly unlatched from his face, bubbled and moseying, bouncing off his rotted cheekbone as he laughed. He vomited blood into his hand. With his finger, he drew a smiley face in blood and teeth on the glass. He beamed from ear to ear, the Sunshine drug devouring all the skin on the lower half of his face. Bloody bone and a checkerboard between teeth and missing teeth were all that remained.
Eldritch bent down and grabbed his satchel and then instantly jumped toward the exit in back. I stood still, shocked, when all of the McCoys rushed in toward the glass and started beating on it with their farmhand weaponry. Within seconds, a siren wailed and a red security light began whirling near the entrance. I dodged sideways on my left ankle and reached to lock the security door. I wasn’t as much securing us from the pounding threat as giving us a few more seconds to escape. My mind scrambled to make sure I had all the key ingredients to get high hidden on me. Cotton. Syringe. Oxy. I always have a lighter. I didn’t get a spoon.
Eldritch rushed back to grab me. Pinball shrieked like any kid would, drowning out the sound of the alarm system. Tears, spit, and snot gushed from her face. She hyperventilated and mashed her whole upper body into Eldritch’s shoulder.
I slapped Eldritch away. “Go, motherfucker!”
He hesitated when one of the hillbilly demons struck the glass with a digging tool. It stuck into the barrier, which began splintering in every direction. As he pulled it out, the wood handle came loose from the metal spade. Five McCoys that were riding on the shoulders of five others followed up and started pounding around and on the spade with sledgehammers. As the plastic glass boundary split everywhere, large chunks started falling to the ground, nearly slicing the top of my foot off. An opening in the middle of the glass grew into a gigantic hole and it ushered in a mildew death stench.
Fuck the spoon.
I spiraled left and headed toward the exit. Not that it would do any good, but I threw one of the shelves to the ground behind me to buy a few seconds’ lead. Then, like a dumb teenage girl running from a slasher movie slayer, I slipped on Pinball’s flashlight and tumbled forward. My nose slammed into the linoleum below and blood gushed into my mouth. My heart jumped into my throat.
Get it together, RJ, I told myself. These guys are a bunch of stupid, fucking hicks. Truth be told, they may have only been an army of roaches, but I was a one-legged ant at the moment.
Trying to ignore the absolute horror closing in on me, I tried to get back to my feet only to have my right pant leg snag on a sharp piece of metal. Like an idiot, I turned around to see the McCoys lifting and launching each other up to the hole like they were in a mosh pit. From all sides, they packed into the opening and tore at the hole. Flesh from their arms and legs tugged loose and slipped from their bones. They didn’t seem to care if they lost body parts. They were filthy, rabid insects, and they were hungry.
I tugged on my jeans and somehow managed to rip them loose directly below my knee. I pushed myself up and shot toward the back.
“The girl is going with The Matrix one,” Smiley yelled.
I continued to drop the shelves on the left and right behind me. Pills and powders filled the air. As I turned a corner into the stock room, I saw the tail from Eldritch’s trench coat flap through a door in back. I picked up the pace by taking longer strides. The sounds of pill bottles popping open and being crushed by the McCoys’s work boots let me know that the collapsed shelves served more as trampolines than interference. I heard their wheezing as they bit their tongues off and swallowed.
“She’s mine, y’all dumbfucks,” one of them hollered.
They wanted Pinball.
“I’m gonna get her and fuck ’er good,” another returned. “He din’t say we couln’t fuck ’er. He just said we coun’t kill ’er.”
I closed in on the door. The sign above it read: NO EXIT. ROOF ACCESS ONLY.
I shoved the door open and jumped onto the fourth step. Although I didn’t have any time to reflect, I couldn’t help but find it weird that these assholes didn’t have any interest in looting the pharmacy. They just wanted Pinball.
As I stubbed my toe on the sixth stair, the Oxy fell out of my untied boot. I turned to see the prescription bottle descending like a slinky back toward hell.
Go bAck.
I tumbled backward after the Oxy. I crashed into the bottom of the stairwell on my back, my legs pushing the door back open.
Halfway to unconsciousness, I felt all around the floor. I found the bottle and looked up to see the first of the predators breaking around the corner. I desperately reached toward the knob on the slowly closing door, not wanting to see the sadistic roach advancing. I licked at the cartilage from my nasal septum that became unglued when I fell on my face, only to realize that I was breathing so hard that I was hissing wildly. With blood bursting through the middle of my face like a busted water gun, I prepared myself for battle.
“I found the gay one,” he hollered back to the rest of the clan. He tore off the straps on his overalls, revealing his ribcage bursting through the sores that were bullseyes for his Sunshine abuse.
I embedded my fingernails into the flashlight, the thick, ribbed plastic crunching in my hand. As he launched himself into the stairwell, I grabbed him by his throat and heaved him over my head, back against the staircase above me. I got to my feet and finally managed to pull the security door shut. He lifted his head off of the stairs, leaving parts of his face merged into the crevasses of the wood. I bashed the flashlight into his skull rapidly until I saw his brain popping through.
The bare feet of the rest of the McCoys slipping and sliding toward me thundered on the other side of the door. Without giving it a second thought, I lifted my victim’s head back by his oily hair and wrenched the front of his face onto the doorknob as if he were a door hanger. Making sure the door was secured from the cyclone on the other side, I broke all his bones backward betwe
en the first step and the bottom of the door. Before I had the chance enjoy my handiwork, hoes, pitchforks, machetes, and bats started beating against the door. I shoved the pill bottle into the back of my jeans, securing it inside the top of my ass crack, and rushed for the roof.
I peered my head out from the roof’s trap door, only to be face-to-shoe with Eldritch’s patent leather Frankenstein boots. For the first time, I was happy to see his shitty fashion statements. I pulled myself through the exit and then kicked the hatch closed. Eldritch dropped two cinder blocks on top of the hatch.
I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “Yeah, you pig-fucking dirt farmers,” and then stretched my neck back, hoping to see Eldritch and Pinball giving me a smile and a thumbs up.
The world slowed.
Eldritch reached his arms over his shoulders, locking Pinball onto his body. He licked his finger and whispered, “Run, RJ.” He took flight and jumped to the roof of the insurance building next door. I looked beyond his launch point and realized that the roaches were crawling over the side of the building, like they burst out of a nest after some kid kicked in the wall of a condemned house. Lead by the BMX kid, three were already sprinting toward me with their eyes bulging from their faces. They seemed to be moving so quickly that their skin was disintegrating with every step they took.
I clutched onto another cinder block by my feet as I noticed a fist punching through the trap door. I stomped on the door as I slung the block at the leader closest to me. He curled sideways, evading it as it hammered into the chest of the dipshit behind him. His chest imploded as he was launched from the top of the building.
With the BMX bandit on my heels, I bolted for the edge. As soon as I reached it, I jumped and spread my legs like I was walking in the sky in an attempt to clear the gravel filled back lot below. On my way down, I latched on to a flimsy tree limb that slowed my momentum but still broke, dropping me on the rocks I was trying to avoid. The ground tore two layers of skin off my exposed knee and one layer off my covered one.