“Hang on, dude,” Jerry said, as if I wasn’t already hanging on as best I could. “I’m gonna try to lose them in the cornfield!”
“That doesn’t make any se—HOLY SHIT!” The Nissan flew off the road with enough speed to jump the ditch. We landed, bottomed out, bounced, and then landed again amidst the slush and dirt. Behind us, the truck made the same turn, crashing into the earth like a meteor before quickly regaining speed. I tried again to explain what should have been obvious. “There’s nowhere to lose them! There’s no corn!”
This was the winter season, which meant all of the corn had already been harvested. We were flying through an empty field with nothing to protect us from the truck closing in. Jerry cackled and twisted the wheel.
My head smashed against the window as the car swung hard left. We went into a fishtail, then a donut, then a figure eight. The truck tried to keep up, cutting through the corners, slowing to double back, nearly running us over before speeding past. Soon, I didn’t even know where we were in relation to the truck. Jerry hammered the gas and flew towards the edge of the field.
“Jerry,” I said nervously. “You see that creek up ahead, right?”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t slow down.
I tried again. “Right?”
The truck straightened itself out and blared its horns. They were coming at us like a torpedo.
The creek was coming closer.
The truck was closing in.
Jerry hit the gas, and yelled out something over the truck’s horn and the Nissan’s whining engine that I think was meant to be, “Trust me.” Not like I had any choice.
Time slowed down as I surveyed the situation. His plan, I gathered, was to try another fake out, turn at the last possible second to miss the creek and hope they were too big or slow or stupid to miss the watery death trap that had already taken countless lives over the town’s sordid history.
We used to tell stories about that creek. About the swimmers who got pulled to the bottom and were never seen again. About catfish big enough to swallow a man whole. About the ghosts of all the bridge workers who died in that freak collapse a few years back.
That creek was haunted, the stories go. Over twenty feet at the deepest part. The perfect place to dispose of a body. The last place I wanted to be on a night like this. And here we were, shooting towards it as fast as my car could take us.
In that pocket of slowed time, I had the chance to calculate our odds. The trajectory was fixed. The car was accelerating. The path was inevitable. We were, as always, slaves to physics. Simply put, we were going way too fast. We were going to hit the creek.
The water’s edge was fifteen feet away.
Now ten feet away.
Five feet away.
I pulled in a deep breath and prepared for the inevitable. If we survived the crash, we were going to have to make a swim for it.
Oh shit. Can I even swim?
I closed my eyes and braced for impact, but the shitty little Nissan glided over the creek’s surface.
I opened my eyes in disbelief. The creek had frozen solid, and we were now atop a layer of ice thick enough to keep us on the right side of the water.
The truck didn’t hesitate to follow our lead, plowing right into and through the ice, sending an eruption of freezing mist into the sky. As soon as our wheels hit dirt again, Jerry skidded to a stop. We were blinded until the ice cloud settled around us. Then, Jerry turned the car around and pointed our headlights back at the broken creek, where the truck was already being pulled under, the ass end pointed upwards as the bubbling waters swallowed them whole.
We didn’t stick around long enough to see if there were any survivors. Instead, we took a shortcut through the forest and got the hell out of there.
***
It was either a miracle or a demonic practical joke, but either way, supernatural elements must have been at play in holding the car together long enough for us to get back to Jerry’s place. For most of the drive, we were dragging something behind us. I don’t know what it was, but judging from the sparks, it was made of metal, and judging from the fact that the car kept going after it fell off, it must not have been too important.
We waited until the car was safely parked outside the compound before we said anything else (not that we had much of a choice; the engine was so loud now that we couldn’t hear each other if we wanted to). When he finally shut the car off, it ended to the sound of a pathetic, high pitched gurgle.
We got out and moved a safe distance away, just in case it was about to explode, then Jerry pulled out his flashlight and pointed it at the car so we could survey the damage. The front bumper was crooked but otherwise in place. The hood and sides were dented all over. Mud was caked all the way up to its roof, and the windshield had a crack running from one side to the other. I didn’t need to look at the engine to know I wouldn’t understand what I was looking at. It got us here, and even if it never turned over again, it had done its job and saved our lives.
Jerry took a deep breath and said, “That… was… awesome… Did you see that? I drove us right over the creek!”
I tore myself away from the car and said, “How did you know that was going to work?”
“Well, I just did some quick math. Your car weighs about five hundred pounds. The truck weighs about ten cars. It’s been snowing for two weeks at an average of twenty degrees each day, and ice freezes a quarter inch per hour. We were doing about a hundred when we hit the creek, so we would have been able to drive on the ice for two minutes while the truck would break through in half a second.”
I shook my head to try and get the stupid out of my ears. “Jerry, not one thing you just said was accurate.”
He turned and headed into the compound, saying, “You can’t argue with results.”
I followed. “I can argue with technique!”
We passed through the freezing bunker, out the back door, and into the school bus, where warmth and light greeted us. Jerry went straight for the radio, but I whacked his hand with my crutch as he reached out for it.
“Hey!” he yelled.
“What are you doing?”
“I have to see why Van wasn’t there.”
I couldn’t believe it. He was still buying into the Russian radio’s tricks.
“Dude, let me explain it to you. Van was never there. I told you already. I watched her die. If the radio knows everything, then it knew there were killers waiting at the old school. And it knew that Vanessa is your weak spot.” He stared at me in disbelief, but I could see the wheels were turning. I was making a lot of sense. “I’m sorry, Jerry. But the voice used Van to lure us into that trap. We were set up. By the radio.”
Before he could respond, the radio switched itself on. On any other day, I might have reacted with a little more surprise, but after the night we’d just been through, it would take more than a possessed radio to impress either of us. I would have turned it off right away if it weren’t for the first thing I heard.
“...fatal familial insomnia…He uses name ‘Jack Townsend’…He has one baby tooth…He is threat level eight…There is another man aware of transmission…His name is Jeremy Pascal…He is threat level echo…They have survived the old school…The collector’s men are drowned…Townsend and Jeremy are in presence of transmission receiver…Jeremy is moving towards transmission receiver…He is disassembling transmi—”
As he stood there staring down at the two pieces of broken radio in his hands, the only sounds left were the grumble of a generator in the distance and the low hiss of the space heater at the back of the bus. Finally, he dropped one half of the radio to the ground with a loud clack and fell into his seat.
He shrugged. “If thou gaze long into an abyss, be warned, for sometimes the abyss doth gaze back… something, something, monsters.”
“Friedrich Nietzsche," I said.
“Gesundheit," he responded.
I went and took a seat on the beanbag next to him.
“I think I’ll take that whiskey now. If you still have it.”
Jerry looked like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He gave me what I took to be a sincere smile and went to find the bottle and a couple of tumblers. As soon as he wasn’t looking, I grabbed the half of the radio closer to me, ripped out the batteries and a couple other smaller pieces, and stuffed them into my pocket, just to keep him honest.
After we finished our drinks, we gathered up every sheet of paper where he had written notes about our town and the people in it, took them outside, and burned them.
***
O’Brien didn’t seem to wonder why my clothes were covered in mud, or why I had a bloody gash on the side of my head, or why I was slightly inebriated. When she picked me up from the compound, she only had one question.
“Is he going to be okay?”
I thought hard before answering. This was the guy who chose to live with a group of doomsday harbingers in a giant tin can in the middle of nowhere. This was the same guy who cried for several hours straight when they left him. The same guy who once pulled the trigger on what he thought was a loaded gun against his head, just for the hell of it.
“I hope so.”
As we drove back to the gas station, I almost told her everything. About Normal’s handless body, about the high-speed chase, about the men in the clown masks. But something kept me from doing so. I knew I’d probably have to pay for it one day, but O’Brien didn’t need to know any of that. The clowns were dead. And Normal himself had insisted I never mention him to anyone, so I compartmentalized it, put it away, and tried to prepare myself for whatever mess would be awaiting me when I walked into the gas station moments later. My imagination had a lot to work with, but the one thing I didn't expect to see was a perfectly clean store.
She had done an incredible job. The aisles were fronted, the counter wiped down, the pralines picked back up and stacked neatly into a pyramid next to the register. There was an upbeat dance song filling the room with uncharacteristic joy and emphatic calls for me to "shake my body" (sorry song, not today). Somehow, even the lights seemed a little brighter in there. Strangest of all, the place smelled okay. Not great, but okay, which was a major improvement.
An elderly man with a gray neckbeard and overalls stood in front of Rosa with his beer gut resting on the counter. She was counting back his change when I walked up and took a spot behind him.
"Here's your change. Have a great day, Mr. Thibodeaux!"
He took his money and left, and she turned her attention to the next person in line—me. Her eyes went wide and she almost jumped.
"Jack! You actually came back!"
I took it all in. The bedazzled pink cell phone playing music on the counter, the lit candle next to it. Rosa's red jacket draped over the seat that she pushed into the corner because, evidently, standing suited her better. She was a few inches shorter than I remembered, but then I noticed her heels on the chair by her purse.
"You're not barefoot, are you?"
"It's okay! I swept and mopped the floors."
"We have a mop?"
She laughed. "I had to do something to pass the time! So, I cleaned. There were a lot of cigarette butts and baby pacifiers. Not sure what the story is there, but I didn't want to throw all those pacifiers away, so I collected them. Filled a whole pickle jar!" She picked up the jar from behind the counter and shook it at me. "We weren't using the pickle jar for anything, were we?"
"Rosa, this is incredible."
She blushed at the compliment. "Thank you."
I made my way behind the counter, shocked by how much cleaner it looked. Were the floors always that color? We really should mop more often. "No, honestly. I can't believe you did all this."
I used my crutch to push a milk crate over to the front of the safe and sat on it while I entered the combination.
"What can I say? I'm a pretty good worker. Some might even call me a catch."
I opened the safe and pulled out the envelope marked "Emergency Fund," checked to make sure the cash was still in there, then held it out for her. I couldn't imagine a more appropriate way to spend the money.
"Here," I said. "This is for tonight."
She took it and put it in her purse without bothering to count.
"This really wasn't too bad. Not how I thought my night was going to end when I came down here, but not bad."
I got up and made my way to the schedule. "When are you available again? I can start officially training you as soon as you’re ready."
She looked away and inhaled sharply. "Oh, this is awkward. I actually got another job already. I just wanted to come down here tonight to give you guys a piece of my mind."
"Oh," I said. "Well, that really is too bad. I hate that I missed so many chances to work with you. I bet it would have made life a lot better having someone as cool as you around."
Did I really just say that? Am I… am I drunk?
She blushed again.
"Thanks, Jack. You’re really sweet."
"You're welcome."
"Well, goodbye forever!"
She put on her shoes and jacket and walked out to her car. A minute later, I was sitting in my usual spot, digging through my bag for a new book to read and actively trying to forget all about my night. Especially Rosa. After all, it wasn't like I was ever going to see her again.
Chapter Eighteen
We called her the fox lady, but I couldn’t tell you why to save my life. To me, she seemed tangible enough to pass for human, and nothing about her was notably foxlike, but I inherited the name from the clerks of gas station past, along with the stories and warnings, and I couldn’t find the motivation to come up with a better moniker, even if I was the last person around who knew anything about her.
Once every couple months or so, going back to way before I started working, she would stop by to gas up her vehicle—a pristine black hearse. Nobody could tell me who she was or where she came from. She didn’t work for the only funeral parlor in our town, and nobody had any memory of seeing her anywhere else but here.
Her behavior was as consistent as it was bizarre. She always came inside the store to walk around while the hearse fueled up, and if she ever made eye contact with anyone, customer or cashier, she would walk up to them and say the same thing.
“Will you come with me?”
Crazy? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m certainly not the best person to judge when someone is in or out of their right mind. But even the Mad Hatter could tell you that the only appropriate response to a question like that is some version of “No.”
Her success rate was, in a word, startling. In another word, impressive. In a much more appropriate word, suspicious. More times than not, when she came to buy her fuel, she ended up finding somebody—normally a part-time clerk—to leave with her.
I’d had a few run-ins with her myself, but I’ve never been one to go out of my way to make conversation or eye contact. She always paid at the pump, so I never had to talk to her if I didn’t want to, and it’s not like I had any reason to collect bonus points in customer service. There was one instance, however, when she caught me by surprise.
I was reading a book about space dragons when I felt a presence on the other side of the counter. The sensation of her gaze was stronger than a heat lamp. When I looked up from the pages, I found myself staring into the eyes of the most beautiful person I’d ever seen anywhere in real life, movies, or imagination. She smiled an impossibly beautiful smile, gestured at the hearse outside, and asked, “Will you come with me?”
For a moment the span of a heartbeat, I was ready to follow whatever adventure awaited us, but the rational side of my brain yanked my consciousness back into the real world like it were a toddler heading into traffic.
“Oh, no thank you.”
She seemed disheartened but persistent. “Will you come with me?”
“Nah. I’m good.”
“Will you come with me?”
“Look,” I sa
id, “I think you’re nice and all, but I’m pretty sure if I get in that hearse, you’re probably going to end up killing me, and I’m really invested in this book and I’ve only got four chapters left to go, so… if you don’t mind…”
She turned sadly and left the building alone. Tony walked up to the counter and stared hard as she glided away. “Who was that beautiful creature?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” I said, turning my attention back to the book. “Probably some kind of metaphor for death.”
After that encounter, I decided it might be a good idea to get an expert opinion, and the closest thing we had to an expert was good old Tom. He always seemed to know things about things, and we had ample video evidence on the security cameras, so I gave him a call. He came down and pored over the footage with me one afternoon, but as a member of law enforcement, there wasn’t much he could do. The only crime on those tapes was an unregistered and untagged motor vehicle.
Tom’s brutal honesty did little to hide the guilt behind his words. “There’s nothing for us to do here. Folks make their own decisions, and unless you can prove she’s doing untoward things to these people, we can’t stop her from taking them for a ride.”
I studied Tom’s face while he watched the screen. His eyes misted as his stare went deep, deeper than the footage, like he wasn’t even seeing the recordings anymore. He was somewhere else. Somewhere far away. “She’s a very beautiful woman...” His voice was barely a whisper. “Reminds me of my Georgette before the cancer took her. If she asked me… if I wanted to come with her… Maybe one day I can—”
I popped the security tape out of the VCR, and Tom reacted like he’d just come up for air and almost didn’t make it.
He asked if he could hold onto all of our tapes of the fox lady to “make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands” (whatever the hell that was supposed to mean), then he locked them in a fire safe he had in the trunk of his cruiser for some reason. Before he drove off, he warned me that she would probably be back one day, and if I ever saw her again, I should do my best to ignore her.
Chapter Nineteen
Tales From the Gas Station 2 Page 23