Tales From the Gas Station 2

by Jack Townsend

  “Who’s your new friend? Rosa, was it? She seems nice.”

  “Oh, her? She's my new Jiu-Jitsu instructor. I had to fire the last one because he said he’d already taught me everything he knew. I’ve been getting pretty shredded since the last time I saw you. Also, I’m taller now.”

  “She doesn’t sound like a Jiu-Jitsu instructor. She sounds like an innocent little girl. Why don’t you do her a favor and send her outside? I promise, she’ll be a lot safer.”

  “I don’t know about that. We’ve got a lot of firepower in here. Plus Jerry built a mech suit. I think we’ll be fine until the rest of the sheriff’s department shows up.”

  He laughed. It was the same deep, sadistic laugh he’d had when he was swinging a shovel at my face. “Sheriff’s department, huh? Let me know how that works out for ya.”

  This might have just been another one of his mind games, but I couldn’t help but take the bait. “What do you mean?”

  “Christ. Give me one second.”

  O’Brien’s radio crackled to life as a voice came through loud enough to fill the entire room. “O’Brien!” It was him. “Can you back the fuck off for one goddamned second and let me talk to Jack in private?”

  The realization hit us immediately. Spencer is watching us right now!

  Rosa squeaked. Jerry hiccupped. O’Brien pulled out her service pistol, crisscrossed it with her flashlight in the opposite hand, and aimed it at the doors and windows, desperately searching for signs of Spencer and yelling, “Everybody take cover! Get away from the windows! Now!”

  Jerry and Rosa darted below the booth table. O’Brien carefully circled the room, pinching out the flames on each of the candles until we were standing in complete darkness, save for the single illumination of her flashlight. Only then did I realize that I still had the phone against my ear.

  Spencer laughed.

  “I’d love to stay and talk, but I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight. If you die before I get to you, I want you to know one thing. All of this was preventable, and all of this was your fault.”

  There was an unusual threat hidden within his words. He loved playing mind games, but that was almost too subtle to be anything but a genuine slip up. “If you die before I get to you…” What the hell did he mean by that? God, I hated him so much!

  “That’s two things,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You said you wanted me to know one thing. Then you said that this was all prevent—”

  “Do you really want to piss me off, Jack? Because right now I’m the best chance you have of getting through the night alive. If I were in your shoe, I wouldn’t—”

  O’Brien snatched the receiver out of my hand and slammed it onto the cradle.

  ***

  Jerry helped O’Brien cover the windows and front door with makeshift curtains of garbage bags and duct tape. It wasn’t going to stop any bullets, but knowing that Spencer couldn’t see us gave me some modicum of comfort.

  I moved a few milk crates and packing blankets into the supply closet where we set up camp for the remainder of the night. The room was easily defendable, close enough to both exits in case we needed to make a run for it, and small enough that our combined body heat would—in theory—keep us from freezing to death before help arrived.

  Jerry found his box of board games and broke out Monopoly, but he passed out under a blanket in the corner before I could even get the pieces sorted. Rosa wasn’t too far behind, apologizing to me and saying she was just going to “rest my eyes for a second.”

  Somehow, despite the severity of the situation, the knowledge that we were being stalked and slowly freezing to death in the middle of an apocalyptic blizzard, the two of them found the power to fall asleep, almost like they were showing off.

  I quietly cracked the door and let myself out. They deserved whatever comfort they could salvage from the night.

  It was much colder out here, but O’Brien didn’t seem fazed by the temperature (or anything, really). She was leaning against the hallway wall nearby, positioned to keep everything important—the front door, the back door, the supply closet—within her line of sight. She was a woman hard at work, focused on protecting three gas station clerks like it was a mission from God. Nothing was going to get through her steely resolve, but I was going to try anyway. It was the least I could do.

  I carried an extra packing blanket over and took my spot on the wall next to her. After a few seconds of familiar silence, I held it up. Without any words, she took it from me and put half over her shoulders. I was surprised when she dropped the remaining slack over my own. Soon, we were both sitting on the ground, huddled under the cover with our backs to the wall.

  When she spoke at long last, I could see her breath in the dim and erratic light of a dozen candles.

  “They both asleep?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know how they can do it.”

  “I’ve seen people sleep through worse. You find a way. Your body adjusts. Well, your body doesn’t, but most do.” I couldn’t help but laugh. It was the shortest kind, a single breath, involuntarily vocalized, but it was genuine, and it was all she needed for permission to relax. She put a warm arm around my shoulder. “You know, Hopalong, I’m really gonna miss you when you’re finally dead.”

  She used a tone to disguise her words as a mere throwaway notion, as fleeting as the cloud that carried them for one unassuming moment before evaporating forever, but I suspected it went deeper than she cared to admit.

  “Well,” I said, “That is pretty presumptuous of you. I’ve outlived or outlasted almost all the other deputies they’ve sent my way. What makes you so confident I won’t be the one missing you?”

  She paid back my laugh with her own. Barely audible behind closed lips, but unmistakable and real. We silently agreed to let the question pass for now.

  “I got through to the sheriff. He’s sending a snow truck first thing in the morning. I told him that this needs to be a priority, but evidently this is snowmageddon and he can’t afford to stretch his precious resources any further tonight.”

  Coming from anyone else, that would have felt like a complete thought, but I could read between the lines. Spencer's remark about the department, the sheriff's relation to the vigilantes—there was more to say. O'Brien was always brutally honest, and the fact that she chose here and now to suddenly play coy was not lost on me. This was the start of a serious conversation, and she was offering me a chance to get off before the ride started. But there was no reason to dance around the subject like the mere thought would give it power. It wasn’t a yawn.

  I picked up the thought. “It’s almost like the sheriff has some kind of ulterior motive for dragging his feet. It’s almost like he and Spencer are on the same team.”

  “Could be. Or maybe he’s telling the truth this time. The storm is real, and it's already claimed one person tonight. But I have to admit, if he isn't part of whatever's wrong with this town, then he's got to be the world's best useful idiot. At this point, I don't know which is worse. He actually laughed at me when I told him we were dealing with Spencer Middleton again! Told me I sounded hysterical!" She tipped her head back and exhaled forcefully. "I don’t know what’s going on here, but ever since I got assigned to gas station duty, my life has gotten exponentially weirder with every passing day.”

  “Yeah,” I said, averting my gaze to the darkness in front of me. “Sorry about that.”

  “I don’t know, maybe your crazy is rubbing off on me."

  "Hang on," I said. "One person died?"

  "Truck went off Second Street bridge. Driver probably didn't realize it was iced over. They called it before I got there. DOA."

  "Only one person?"

  She held onto her answer for a moment, no doubt trying to figure out where the sudden interest was coming from. But our conversation ended there, with another voice interrupting with urgency.

  "Um, guys? Hello?!" It was coming from the supply closet.


  O’Brien had the door pushed open and her gun in hand before I could get to my crutch. By the time I reached her in the doorway, she’d already assessed the situation and holstered her weapon.

  "Did something happen?" she asked.

  Jerry was on the ground in the far corner, staring at Rosa. He was the one who called out for help, but she was the one standing in the center of the room, facing us and frozen in a look of wide-eyed terror. She held the packing blanket against her chest with both hands, gripping it tightly enough to turn her fists deathly white.

  Rosa didn't react to the question. She just stared forward, past either of us, with tears streaming down her face and cosmic horror in her eyes.

  “Quiet!” she commanded in a deep voice that did not sound anything like her own. "Do you hear that?"

  As she spoke, the hairs on my neck stood at attention. The look in her eyes, the voice that wasn’t hers—these were reason enough to worry, but my subconscious had latched onto something else. Something special that the rest of my mind was still catching up to. I saw it like a lighthouse in the fog, but I couldn’t piece together any more than the barest idea. Something’s wrong. Something is very wrong.

  “Hear what?” I asked, cautiously.

  “He’s coming,” she said in her foreign voice. “He’s almost here. If he finds it, we’re all doomed. We mustn't let him find it.”

  “Girl,” said O’Brien, “You are freaking us out. Who’s coming? Spencer?”

  “He sees you from the other side of the void. His hunger is eternal. Soon, it will be too late.”

  “She’s dreaming,” I said, proud to have found an explanation that fit so neatly within our comfortable realm of understanding. But that nagging feeling was still there. Something is undeniably wrong. "Yeah, one of my foster brothers used to do the same thing. Her eyes are open, but she’s talking in her sleep.”

  Right then, as if to challenge my confidence, her eyes rolled back unnaturally far into their sockets, revealing nothing but veiny white bulges.

  O’Brien asked, “Did your foster brother do that, too?”

  “Okay,” I admitted. “That is different.”

  “Should we wake her?”

  “Guys!” Jerry called out. “I don’t think she’s sleeping.”

  All at once, my perception caught up to what my instinct had already divined. There was something wrong, and watching Jerry speak, I realized what it was. His words and breath hung in front of his face, frozen momentarily by the cold. But Rosa’s did not.

  Why can’t I see her breath?

  She slowly began to inch forward, speaking in that unnatural voice that continued to warp and evolve with each syllable. “If he finds you, every living being will be transformed into a conduit for agony and suffering.” Her shoulders stayed steady. She showed no sign of breathing, but the words continued to pour from her, unabated. I could hear other voices coming from the nothing, joining hers in a trickle at first, and growing into a storm. Soon, a chorus of hundreds were speaking in unison from her mouth, combined into a singular voice no louder than her own. “You will all beg for death, but it will never come. An unfathomable horror from worlds inconceivable waits at the gate. Do not open the door.”

  Wait, so is it a gate or a door? Fix your mixed metaphors, creepy nightmare Rosa.

  Her hair began to rise and flow in the candlelight as if she were coursing with static electricity. Then, she dropped the blanket, revealing the source of Jerry’s concern—the bottoms of her feet were floating almost three inches off the ground.

  At the same time, O’Brien and I said, “Oh.”

  She held her hands up in front of her, blood running together through the lines of her palms from where she’d gripped the packing blanket tight enough for her fingernails to dig through the skin on the other side. By the time she started speaking in another language that didn’t sound anything like English or Spanish, O'Brien decided that she'd seen enough.

  It might have been an overreaction to shoot Rosa in the stomach with a taser gun, but then again it might not have been. I can’t blame O’Brien for not wanting to take any risks. The important thing is that it worked.

  Rosa fell backwards onto Jerry and woke up in a screaming fit of expletives and confusion. It took about twenty minutes before she was calm enough to let us pull the prongs out of her skin and get her patched up.

  ***

  Rosa sat on the counter by the register while O’Brien put the finishing touches on her bandages. The wounds on her torso were easy fixes, but the bandages on her hands took a little more work. When it was done, Rosa looked like she was prepped for boxing.

  “You want something for the pain?” Jerry asked.

  “No, not really.”

  “Alright, I’m gonna go get you something for the pain. Are you a wine-cooler kind of gal?”

  “No.”

  “Alright, I’m gonna go get you a wine cooler. Anybody else want anything?” I shook my head while O’Brien ignored him outright. He clapped his hands together and said, “Alright, fantastic. I’ll be right back with three wine coolers.”

  “How’s that feel?” O’Brien asked.

  Rosa wiggled her fingers. “Feels better. Why did you shoot me with a taser?”

  Always with the questions, Rosa.

  I spared O’Brien the awkwardness of having to explain. She’d already done most of the hard work, and I felt like I needed to contribute. “You were sleep floating.”

  “Oh,” Rosa said. “Sorry about that. I really didn’t mean to.”

  “Hey guys?” Jerry called from the other side of the room. “What do you suppose that is?”

  We shined our flashlights in his direction to see him pointing at something slumped up against the cold drink case. As first glance, it looked like a body. O’Brien’s gun was in her hand before I even saw her reach for it. “Stay here,” she ordered.

  She kept her weapon trained on the ground and moved quickly, carefully, hugging the wall and searching for any evidence that this was a trap. She approached the body like it was a potential bomb, and when she was an arm's length away, she swore under her breath.

  I took a step closer. "It's him, isn't it?"

  "Keep back!" She yelled. The way she was reacting, it very well might have been a bomb. But I had a bad feeling we weren’t going to be so lucky.

  Rosa dropped down from the counter behind me and whispered timidly, "Who is it?"

  Jerry beat me to it. “Holy crap on a cracker,” he exclaimed. “Is that Spencer?”

  He had a busted lip, swollen black eye, and scrapes and bruises covering his face like he had gone ten rounds with a dump truck, but O’Brien was smart enough not to let her guard down. She kept one finger on the trigger as she checked for signs of breathing. Sadly, she found exactly that.

  She pulled him forward, rolled him onto his front, and cuffed both hands behind his back, somehow pulling the whole thing off in less than three seconds and with only one hand. She wasn’t going to trust Spencer enough to put down her weapon and she didn’t trust us enough to help her (both respectable calls).

  Despite her clear warnings and our own common sense, we were inexplicably drawn to the unconscious man like mosquitoes to a bug zapper. In no time, we had him surrounded on all sides, but even in the heavy silence, I could tell we were all feeling the same thing. A sense of dread. A realization that this man didn’t play by the same rules as the rest of us, and if he chose to come inside the building, then this was exactly where he wanted to be. Worse, if he didn’t come in of his own will, then we were dealing with something none of us understood, and there’s only one thing worse than the devil you know.

  “Do you think that’s going to be enough?” I asked. “One pair of handcuffs?”

  O’Brien finally felt safe enough to put her gun away. “He’s unconscious and unarmed. What exactly did you have in mind?”

  I said, “Maybe we can tie him up,” at the same time that Jerry blurted out, “Wooden stake through the h
eart!”

  We compromised and found a roll of duct tape to secure him to a rolling chair, then we pushed the chair into the supply closet, then nailed the door shut. O’Brien gave me another dollar for the till and called it in right away, a tense and heated conversation that lasted less than one minute before she slammed the receiver down. From what I picked up, the sheriff wasn’t too happy about this turn of events.

  I wonder why.

  ***

  A few minutes later, we heard the pounding on the roof.

  SLAM!

  The first one jolted us into high attention. We didn’t have but maybe two seconds before the next.

  SLAM!

  We were huddled together, sitting on the floor in front of the counter and wearing packing blanket robes while Jerry cooked a can of ravioli over a candle-fire. We traded a few looks, uncertain of what to make of it. The silence that followed layered over the sound of my own heart beating in double time.

  “Was that a tree branch?” Rosa offered. I was ready to accept her theory until—

  SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!

  They were coming consistently, like a muffled machine gun.

  SLAMSLAMSLAMSLAM!

  “What the hell is that?!” O’Brien cried over the noise.

  SLAMSLAMSLAMSLAM!

  They came together, five to ten each second. We covered our ears to muffle the pervasive pounding that echoed off the walls and floor of our tiny building (except for Jerry who couldn’t be bothered to put down his wine cooler). And then, just as suddenly as it started, the percussion show on the roof came to an end.

  I waited a few seconds to see if there was going to be an encore. When none came, I suggested, “Maybe it was a hailstorm?”

  “Or maybe,” offered Jerry, “It was him... escaping.” He pointed at the door to the room where we were keeping our prisoner.

  “How does that make any sense?” asked O’Brien.

  “Lady, we are way past the point of making any sense,” he answered. “I think you know that.”

  Amazingly, that was all it took to convince her. A minute later, O’Brien had the hammer in her hands, prying back out the nails on the door to Spencer’s makeshift jail cell. Despite herself, she took a moment after the last nail was removed before opening the door. Clearly, she was working up the nerve to do what had to be done, but it almost felt like she was pausing for suspense.