Slithers

by Mortensen, WW

  Who smokes indoors these days? And at a service station, for Christ’s sake?

  Rachel said, “You didn’t see our van on your way past? Stuck in the gully?”

  “No.”

  Ressler’s story was suspicious. Tobe doubted Ressler could have beaten them here; they would have crossed paths on the road, as Rachel had argued. If by chance they had missed each other, and he had been outside just now like he claimed, why hadn’t he responded to their calls for help? Why muddy the facts?

  This was unsettling, but that irksome smile was worse. What was so fucking amusing? As Tobe tried to work this out, he realised that, in fact, maybe Ressler wasn’t smiling—his mouth appeared to naturally curve up at the edges, giving that impression. There was something beneath the pseudo-smile that kept it in place, and Tobe shivered.

  Ressler had the demeanour of the schoolyard bully; not the big, dumb, tough ones—the smarter ones. He had the look—smile—of a mind constantly turning devilish ideas, like a tongue probing at a cavity in a tooth; the look—smile—you’d catch the instant before he pulled down your shorts in front of the girl you were hoping to ask to the end-of-year dance—

  —back at school, Mark Fisher had tried exactly that, had tried to get me, like he tried to get me every day in one way or another, but Scottie had seen the move coming, somehow sensed it and had jumped in before the ‘Fish’ had even taken a threatening step. Scoop was a small kid and not a brawler, but that day he wiped the smile off the Fish’s face for good—

  Ressler glanced towards Tobe.

  Tobe tensed.

  For real this time, Ressler smiled, and Tobe was again reminded of his childhood tormentor. Maybe all bullies had that look of someone who knew you were on to them, but didn’t care. Tobe half-expected Ressler to toss him a wink…

  Instead, Ressler looked away, up to the ceiling, and the domed CCTV cameras.

  “Tobe…”

  It was Scottie. A whisper.

  Of their group, he and Scottie were farthest from Ressler, down the back near the fridges laden to the brim with energy drinks. Their view of Ressler was partially blocked by shelves of glossy magazines and greeting cards; it stood to reason that Ressler’s own view was similarly obscured. Scottie, furtive, nudged Tobe, careful not to draw attention. Free of Ressler’s stare, Tobe played along, lowered his gaze to the object Scottie had fished from his pocket and held out to him.

  A palm-sized identification card. Inside a plastic sleeve.

  Scottie held it up for Tobe, but kept it hidden from Ressler. “Look at the name, and the photo,” he whispered.

  Stepping deeper into the store, Ressler stubbed out his cigarette. “How ’bout you guys join us, eh?” he said to Tobe and Scottie.

  Distracted, Tobe looked up and opened his mouth to respond, but Brad’s voice, coming from over near the window, interrupted. “Hey, there’s someone out there!”

  Through the large wall of glass to the left of the entry, a figure approached—a man, grossly overweight and dressed in ill-fitting, high-vis coveralls. Slow and unsteady, the man staggered amongst the pumps, towards the convenience store entrance. His weaving, ungainly progress suggested he was drunk.

  Tobe hesitated, watched him for a few more strides. No, not drunk, but something about his lurching gait wasn’t right. Perhaps he had a physical impairment.

  He needs help.

  Tobe started for the door, but strangely, Scottie held him back, and then suddenly Sarah was there, at the door herself. She had it half open when Ressler stepped beside her and slammed it shut.

  Eyes wide with surprise, Sarah said, “That man is hurt!”

  “Get away from the door.”

  Brad bristled. “Dude, take it easy!”

  Tobe wanted to move forward, towards the door, but Scottie’s fingers still grasped his arm.

  “Tobe—look!” Scottie said.

  Tobe looked down. Scottie waved the plastic sleeve containing the identification card, and when he steadied it, Tobe saw it was a driver ID. Scottie must have removed it from the cab of the truck, presumably for the cops. The ID read ‘Brian William Ganson’. The photo was of a bald man with no neck—a big man, by the looks.

  Tobe glanced from the ID to Ressler and then back again.

  Ressler was not the man in the photo.

  Ressler wasn’t the truck driver.

  The truck driver—Brian Ganson—was the man outside.

  What the hell?

  Confused, still feeling drawn to the door, Tobe again moved for it, and this time Scottie let him go. He managed only two steps before Ressler—moving laterally to block the exit—drew an object from the waistband of his jeans and waved it in the air.

  At the sight of the gun—some kind of revolver—Sarah cried out and leapt backwards into Brad’s arms.

  Ganson reached the door and thumped against it as though unaware it had been closed. The tempered safety glass shook, vibrated. Ganson bounced off, moved forward, bounced off it again. Flesh slapped against the pane with a wet sound.

  What in God’s name…?

  The hair on Tobe’s arms rose.

  Ganson’s clothes were spattered in blood, ink-black in the fluorescent light.

  Where he’d slapped against the glass, a bloody residue remained.

  “Let me in,” Ganson hissed. It was a sibilant, reptilian sound.

  Brad stepped towards Ressler, as though making for the gun.

  Ressler waved him back. “Easy, bro, don’t be a hero. All of you… listen up. Don’t open that door. You don’t want him in here.”

  Pausing, Brad raised his arms. “It’s all good, man. Just take it easy, okay? No-one needs to get hurt.”

  Ganson slapped against the glass.

  Tobe strained for a better look, took another step towards the front of the store, his legs as heavy as lead.

  Hands in the air like Brad, Ethan took a cautious step forward, too, so that he stood alongside Brad, Sarah and Rachel. The gap to Ressler had shrunk to three feet. “Dude, put the gun down,” he said.

  “Back the fuck off, surfer-boy,” Ressler said. He waved the pistol at Ethan, and then at all four of them collectively. “All of you step back, over there with rock-chick.”

  Tory hadn’t moved from her position near the door to the cashier’s office. Tobe was a step behind her, and two or three steps behind him, was Scottie.

  Less out of defiance than distraction, the group of four closest to Ressler hesitated as Ganson rapped on the glass ever louder. The man was injured, maybe also under the influence of something and increasingly desperate. “Let me in!” he said.

  “He needs help!” Sarah said.

  Ganson pushed hard against the glass. His face contorted. “Let me in,” he hissed, wincing. “It slithers….”

  With those words Ganson’s eyes bulged so wide that Tobe feared they might explode from his head. Gripping his midsection, Ganson doubled at the waist, looking as though he might crumple to the ground. Instead, he issued a wet, agonised groan that rumbled for several seconds before tapering to a whimper. When Ganson straightened again, he seemed calmer, in control. He no longer rapped at the glass. Staring straight ahead, focused on no-one in particular but speaking to all, he said, “Let him in.”

  “What the..?”

  With a slow roll of his eyes, Ganson turned to the flickering light above the door. The starter had failed, the ionized gas deprived of its electrical jumpstart. With each sputter, the ends of the tube glowed, but little else. Ganson regarded it, curious, his head tilted.

  His legs gave out.

  Ganson collapsed, disappearing below Tobe’s line of sight as though he’d blinked from reality. From outside, just beyond the door, a brief cry of white-hot agony shattered the silence, followed by a series of watery, rending sounds. It could have been flesh tearing, for all Tobe knew, and then a sudden powerful spray of blood jetted across the glass door and someone screamed.

  6

  Distracted by Ganson, Ressler never
saw Ethan’s lightning-fast lunge as he whipped the Maglite from the waistband of his jeans and swung it in a tight arc through the air.

  The heavy handle caught Ressler on the side of the head, impacting with a sickening, hollow-sounding clunk and sending the John Deere cap flying. Ressler struck the counter silently, bounced off a magazine rack, and crashed to the ground in a shower of confectionery. The rack followed, toppling between Ressler and the entry door. The pistol clattered from Ressler’s limp fingers and skidded across the floor to disappear beneath a newspaper stand.

  At first, no-one ran for it. Each of them stood rooted to the spot, transfixed by the crimson pool spreading from the base of Ressler’s skull, so dark and glossy on the white-tiled floor that it reflected the overhead fluorescents.

  “Jesus, Ethan…” Brad said.

  Ressler moaned. He lay on his back, face-up, and one arm jerked out, painting on the tiles a bloody angel wing. A knee lifted.

  He was alive, and he was conscious.

  Ethan turned to Tory, and as he did, Tobe caught a flash of those oddly-coloured eyes, neither green nor blue, but also both, and neither. “We need to restrain him,” Ethan said. “Get my pack.”

  At that moment, the world slipped into slow motion. Bodies flew into panicked action. As instructed, Tory ran to the back of the store, past Tobe and Scottie, to where the two hikers had dumped their packs. Sarah baulked, torn between Ressler and Ganson just beyond the entry door. Rightly or wrongly, she chose the nearest crisis and fell to her knees beside Ressler. This, in turn, caused Brad to hesitate; he wavered between Sarah and the gun, seemingly confused as to why his girlfriend would help the son of a bitch who had threatened them, maybe wanting to protect her, but surely cognisant, too, of the weapon’s value.

  He chose the gun.

  Brad dived to the ground, reaching under the newspaper stand as Rachel stepped towards the door.

  Time sped up. Tobe snapped from his reverie. From his position—closer to the rear of the store than the front, and behind shelving—he couldn’t clearly see the entry, especially with his four companions crowded in there with Ressler and the overturned magazine rack in the way, but he needed to know what had happened to Ganson. He weaved a path to the door, sidestepping Sarah and Ethan—careful not to slip in Ressler’s blood—and hurled the magazine rack aside.

  He drew up sharply next to Rachel. She was shaking.

  “Holy shit…” Tobe said.

  Like Ressler, Ganson lay face up in his own mushrooming pool of crimson.

  Ganson’s condition, however, was immeasurably worse than Ressler’s.

  The large man was slumped at the foot of the door. His coveralls—from the leg cuffs to the collar—were drenched in tar-coloured blood. His exposed skin—mainly along his hands and forearms, but also along his neck, face and hairless scalp—bore a series of deep, elongated scratches.

  Or so at first it seemed.

  Tobe felt the moan building, bubbling up in his throat, and when he tasted bile he realised he was about to throw up. He bit it back.

  They weren’t scratches. They were ruptures of some kind, as though the skin had separated and the fatty flesh beneath had pushed upwards and out, like the ballooning meat of a sausage that had split along its length. The riven flesh oozed and bubbled with more dark blood, so too Ganson’s enormous belly and his thick, barrel chest, where the material of his coveralls had seemingly burst apart.

  More bile. Tobe’s stomach rolled. Had something erupted from inside Ganson? What could do that to a person? What in God’s name had happened?

  The blood that had jetted across the door—maybe arterial spray, judging by the height and apparent strength of the spatter—ran in sticky rivulets down the glass. This same fountain had shot out towards the pumps, too, patterning the concrete like a gushing water-sprinkler.

  So much blood…

  Splayed at ten and two, Ganson’s muddied boots were aligned with the pumps. His bald head, pressed against the door, was slightly elevated, his neck jammed tight at the point where the door met the ground. His stubbled face was tilted such that Tobe could see it in profile. One hand rested against the glass.

  The fingers of that hand twitched.

  “Oh my God,” Rachel said, stumbling backwards behind Tobe.

  No way….

  Ganson was alive. Despite the wounds and massive blood loss, Ganson was alive.

  With effort, the large man heaved his great bulk, sat up.

  Following Rachel’s lead, Tobe retreated from the glass. Scottie, who had joined them, did too.

  Sitting now at the foot of the door, Ganson moved to stand. His meaty fingers, slick with blood, sought purchase on the glass, but slipped down the pane with an unpleasant squealing noise, trailing a grisly smear. Ganson reached up again, gave it another heave, a monumental effort that elicited a deep moan. The sound, emanating from such a huge frame and no doubt equally huge lungs, grew and became a frighteningly loud bellow so piercing that Tobe covered his ears with his hands.

  My God…

  Ganson maintained the roar and blood and saliva sprayed from his lips in a powerful stream. Snarling, he tried to draw himself upright, but suddenly slipped in his own blood and collapsed. With that, the bellow died. Silent again, sitting on the ground with his shoulder against the glass door, Ganson drooped. His chin fell to his chest. Saliva swung in strands from closed lips. His arms sank to his sides. More gouges lay across the convex curve of Ganson’s back, and dark blood ran over the material of his coveralls.

  “Fuck me,” Brad said in a low voice. His search for the gun had been successful: he clasped the revolver down by his thigh.

  Tobe swallowed, caught his breath. “He needs help,” he said.

  “I don’t think we should go out there,” Brad said.

  “I know, but…”

  Rachel stood to Tobe’s right. “We can’t go out there,” she said. “Look at him, Tobe. Look at his skin. I think he’s sick.”

  “I think he’s dead,” Brad said.

  A rhythmic expansion and deflation of Ganson’s chest indicated he was in fact alive, although not for long. You don’t lose that much blood and live to tell the tale. Once more, Tobe cast his gaze over Ganson’s gruesome wounds and considered Rachel’s statement. She was right. Ganson was sick—he had to be. Those skin eruptions were the result of a disease, some kind of virus. There could be no other explanation.

  “Ebola,” Tobe wondered aloud. “That causes haemorrhaging, doesn’t it?”

  Sarah was kneeling over Ressler with a cloth strip torn from Ressler’s shirt pressed against his head. Her attention, however, was on Ganson. She swallowed hard. “He doesn’t have Ebola,” she said.

  Tobe couldn’t be sure of that, but welcomed her assessment. “He’s sick, though, isn’t he?”

  “Fuckin’ A,” Ethan interrupted, “and there’s sure as shit nothing we can do for him. Look at him, for Christ’s sake. He’s a goner.”

  “Maybe so,” Tobe said, “but we could try and ease his suffering.”

  Rachel nodded. “There might be painkillers in the First-Aid kit, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  Ethan snorted. “There’s aspirin. He’s beyond that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Brad said. “Even if we had something stronger, it’s not safe out there.”

  Conflicted, Tobe considered Ganson’s slumped, vulnerable form, above which the faulty fluorescent tube flickered and buzzed like one of those bug zappers. “We have to do something,” he said. “We can’t leave him like that.”

  “You want to go out there, be my guest,” Brad said. “But I’m not going anywhere near that shit.”

  Tobe didn’t want to go out there, either, but felt they had to. They weren’t trapped—although Ganson’s great bulk blocked the threshold, the door to the convenience store opened inward. They could exit the station when they were ready. But they’d have to step over the huge man, past him, to get outside. It’d be a tight squeeze, pe
rhaps too tight. They might even have to move him, push him aside. He’d be heavy.

  There’s no avoiding the blood.

  They could go through a window. The staffroom window was barred, but the store window—while fixed—could be smashed.

  With a thud, Ethan’s pack landed on the ground beside Ressler. Tory dropped to her knees beside it.

  Ethan smiled at her. “Thanks babe,” he said. “Now reach in and grab the rope. Front pocket.” He returned his gaze to Ressler, on guard should he stir.

  Sarah, too, turned back. The strip of shirt that she had pressed to Ressler’s head was soaked red. “You nearly killed him, Ethan,” she said.

  “He’s alive, isn’t he?”

  “You’re lucky. A hit like that can be fatal. As it is, there could be cerebral compression; bleeding or swelling inside the skull. He mightn’t be out of the woods.”

  “What was I supposed to do? He pulled a gun on us. I thought you’d be grateful.”

  From Ethan’s pack, Tory fished a length of nylon climbing rope coiled in a figure-eight. She passed it to her boyfriend. He started to untie it.

  “Weren’t you listening, Ethan?” Rachel said. “The man may have a fractured skull. He’s unconscious. There’s no need to tie him up.”

  “The guy threatened us. Call it a citizen’s arrest,” Ethan said.

  “You could make things worse.”

  “I acted in self-defence.”

  “If he dies, it’ll be manslaughter.”

  “As I said: self-defence.”

  Tory rolled her eyes. “He won’t die, Rachel. Don’t be dramatic.”

  “Why are you carrying rope?” Rachel said.

  “Are you joking? We’re campers.”

  More squabbling. Brad and Scottie joined in. Sarah ignored them and swivelled back to Tobe. “This cloth is soaked through,” she said, referring to the makeshift compress. “I have to stem the flow. Can you grab me one of those?” She jutted her chin. Attached to the wall between the cashier’s office and the staffroom was a clothes rack laden with bargain-priced souvenir T-shirts.