by J. D. Bishop
Jeff really didn't feel like arguing. His head felt like it was going to explode with Becky harping at him. Dropping the Doritos and Twinkies on the store floor, he popped open the bottle of Excedrin and took three of the pills down dry. Becky's scowl immediately softened seeing the distress Jeff was in.
“You really weren't lying, were you?” she asked, putting a concerned hand on his shoulder. When Jeff shrugged her off, she sighed, her anger immediately gone. “Look, I'm sorry, okay? I just don't like being turned down is all. Especially because . . . I’m gonna be honest—this is sometimes weird for me too.”
Jeff's head was about to pop off and all she cared about was her hurt feelings. Funny. Still, it was an effort from Becky. Jeff was proud, given the circumstances, and he patted her shoulder, making an effort to be decent. “Okay, I guess that’s gotta stress you some.”
Becky crossed her arms under her breasts and took a deep breath, then she gave him a smile and a nod. “Yeah, and I’m sorry if I was bitchy. Is there anything I can get for you?”
“Something to drink,” Jeff said. He didn't want to vomit the pills back up.
Becky brought him a cold bottle of Gatorade from the freezer, which Jeff obligingly turned up. The cool liquid poured down his throat, and he sighed gratefully as the tension in his head went from a solid nine to a merely thudding eight.
“Hope the store owner doesn't get mad you opened some stuff,” Becky said as she gathered up the Twinkies and Doritos from the floor.
“He or she will understand,” Jeff said as he finished the bottle of Gatorade. He grabbed another bag of peanuts—maybe he’d be hungry later—and they brought the goods to the counter. The store clerk was still nowhere in sight, which was totally batshit. Jeff began ringing a bell that sat on the counter. “Hello,” he called, peering around the counter at a room beyond it. “Anyone home?”
He couldn't see much in the room beyond because dark blinds hung in the way. It appeared so quiet back there that if there were someone back there, they should have heard him easily. “I guess this shit’s free,” he said to Becky. “This is fuckin’ weird.”
Becky looked around furtively then gave him a devious grin. “If the store owner isn't here, we should take some more shit, like the best alcohol. I saw some good labels back there, high-level stuff.”
Jeff wasn’t a total goody two-shoes, but that was a level he wasn’t sure he was ready to cross. “I don't know if we should. I'm sure this store is under surveillance.”
Christy came out from the back of the store with a disgusted look on her face. “That bathroom smells like three-month-old, unwashed ass in there. It's absolutely filthy. I saw at least a dozen bloody tampons on the floor. Whoever those bitches are who left that shit in there ought to be ashamed of themselves. I had to stand over the toilet bowl and pee. I was afraid I might catch an STD even through the seat covers.” Christy paused when she saw the two staring at each other. “What's going on?”
Jeff nodded at Becky. “Becky here wants to get caught on camera stealing shit.”
Becky harrumphed and tossed her head like the world’s most spoiled princess, clearly outraged. “Do not! Whoever works the store obviously left it unattended for a little while. I don't see why we shouldn't take what we want.”
“Fuck yeah!” Christy exclaimed, not needing any more encouragement for her stoned ass, and began grabbing stuff off the shelves.
Jeff shook his head as Becky put on a wicked smile before sticking out her tongue and joining Christy in robbing the joint. Jeff didn't know what to do. There was no way he was leaving the bottle of Excedrin, but it appeared no one was even working the store. His headache already seemed to be getting better, but the Excedrin couldn't have been working that fast. The Gatorade, perhaps? Maybe he could leave a little money for what they took, then they weren’t technically stealing. He decided that he might as well join the fun. Fuck it. He couldn’t get in that much trouble. He was still in high school.
Jeff was about to join the girls when he heard footsteps coming from beyond the counter, and he turned to realize the store wasn’t actually deserted. A middle-aged man shuffled into view, but it took a solid thirty seconds for him to cross the space from the door to the counter. Jeff was taken aback at how sickly he looked as he stood, unable to move. His skin was ghastly white, his eyes red-rimmed. A cold sweat seemed to bead on his forehead and his mouth looked slightly slack. He looked like the walking dead.
“What are you girls doing?” the clerk demanded in a papery rasp, looking beyond Jeff to the girls.
Becky froze, mid-grab of some cold beer out of the refrigerated aisle. Jeff almost laughed at how petrified she looked. She looked like she got caught with her hand in a cookie jar as she slowly put the beer under her other arm back.
“We were just getting some stuff for the road,” Jeff said quickly in his most convincing voice. “We thought no one was here.”
The man grunted, not looking convinced. He walked unsteadily to the counter and began ringing up the fattening snacks and Jeff's medicine, and Jeff took a deep breath. The man looked too tired to push the issue.
“I drank all of this Gatorade, but I intend to pay for it,” Jeff said, pushing the empty bottle of Gatorade forward. Maybe he could smooth the rest of it over by being helpful.
The man's hands were shaking severely as he rang the bottle up, and he had to scan the thing three times to get it to read.
“Hey, man, are you all right?” Jeff still had a headache, but this man looked far worse for wear. Seriously, Jeff was worried he was going to have to call 911 on the guy.
The man seemed agitated by the question. “Some kids came in here hours earlier, throwing up and coughing. I had to eject them from the store, because they were acting like wild animals. I'm thinking I've caught whatever it was that was going around between them. I'll be all right. I've weathered far worse.”
The man waved it off with a shaky hand, his breath rasping in his chest. Jeff thought again that he didn't look anywhere close to being all right. He looked like he needed an emergency trip to the ER. The man was bagging Jeff's items when the girls walked up to the counter, most of their bounty gone back to the shelves. Becky gave Jeff a look when she saw the man's morbid appearance, and Jeff shrugged. He was beyond understanding what the fuck was going on.
The man handed Jeff the bag of goods, pushing it across the counter because he was so weak. Jeff nearly dropped the bag in shock when their hands briefly touched. The man's hand was as cold as ice.
“That will be . . .” The clerk's voice trailed off, a blank look coming over his face. He stared straight ahead, unmoving, breathing in and out. His breathing suddenly seemed scarce. Shallow.
“Sir, are you okay?” Becky appeared shaken by the man's ghastly appearance. When the man didn't respond, she turned to Jeff. “Something is wrong with this guy. Maybe we should call 911.”
Jeff had been thinking the same thing. He pulled out his cellphone and dialed 911. Fuck if the cops showed up and busted them for pot. This guy was all sorts of fucked up. “Sir, we're going to get you help, okay?”
The man didn’t answer. His breathing was getting fainter, sounding like a low wheeze. His shaking stopped, and he just sort of stood there like a statue.
“Damn it,” Jeff cursed. He looked at his phone, then jabbed at the buttons angrily, holding it to his ear again before shaking his head in disbelief. “Of all the fuckin’ times.”
“What?” Christy asked.
“My cellphone reception is shitty in here. I keep losing signal.”
Christy pulled out her cellphone and dialed 911. She shook her head. Christy seemed totally sober now, her face pale as she showed them her phone. Zero bars. “Mine’s no good either.”
“Guys . . .”
Becky was staring at the man whose breathing had gotten so shallow. His body seemed unnaturally still, so each inhale was pronounced, his chest rising and falling slowly. The man took one last breath that let out into a long s
igh, then nothing. Jeff expected the man to fall over—that’s what you’re supposed to do when you die, according to the movies—but he was shocked when he did not.
The three teens stared at the man, trying to understand how he could still be standing when he had just taken his last breath. Jeff stared at his chest. It had not moved in the past minute. The man was completely devoid of color now, his face as pale as the walls of the store. His lips were blue. Jeff could feel the cold radiating from the man. He looked officially dead.
Jeff reached out to touch the man and recoiled in horror at what he felt. If the man felt as cold as ice earlier, he was liquid nitrogen at this point. He was freezing and stiff to the touch.
“It can't be possible,” Jeff whispered, horror creeping down his spine. His eyes were glued on the man's ashen face, which looked like it was made of wax now.
“Uh, guys . . . I think we should leave. I'm like totally freaked out right now.” Christy was shivering, a look of fear on her face. In unison, she and Becky dropped their goods on the floor as they stared at the man in disbelief.
“Let's go, Jeff,” Becky said as she suddenly grabbed Jeff's arm and began pulling him away. Jeff resisted briefly, staring into the dead man's eyes. Something seemed to be happening with them. The color was fading from the man's eyes. Jeff let out a strangled gasp at the sight and quickly scrambled the girls, forgetting their bags of munchies, out of the store.
They ran for their lives to the car. Tearing open the back door, they slid inside, slamming the doors shut behind them and making Greg and Wes look at them in absolute confusion. Once inside, they all began speaking at once, their voices tripping over each other and adding to the confusion.
“That man in the store died . . .”
“He's still standing on his f-f-feet!”
“Get us the fuck away from here now!”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down," Greg said, turning down the music and cutting off the summer anthem right in the middle of the chorus. “What the hell happened in there? And what took you guys so long?”
“Just fucking drive,” Becky screamed, frantically looking out the windows. She pounded the back of Greg’s seat, her eyes wide and panicked. “Start the engine and drive!”
Jeff might have been willing to listen to Becky when she got like that, but Greg still felt like he had to be the boss. “Listen, Becky, I'm not going anywhere with you talking to me like that. Now tell me—”
Christy let out an ear-piercing scream, cutting off Greg’s words like a knife chop. She pointed out between the car seats, her face pale except for the two splotches of angry panic pink on her cheeks.
“The fuck is that?” Wes asked curiously, staring straight ahead as his addled brain followed Christy’s finger out the front windshield. “Dude.”
A man stood about ten feet from the front of their car. It was the store clerk. And he looked deader than dead. But somehow, he was walking, his empty face sort of just looking for something, but looking at nothing.
“Go!” urged Becky. “GO!”
“What do you want me to do?” Greg asked, his eyes fixed on the man who was still sort of wandering aimlessly. “I’m supposed to just run the man over?”
“If you have to, yes!” Becky shrieked. “Go now, please.”
Violently shaking his head, Greg said, “I'm not doing that. Look at the guy. He’s a fucking wreck. He looks like he's in need of our help.”
Becky punched the back of Greg's seat in panic, jolting him forward and making him tap the horn of the car. “He's beyond our help, damn it! He's de—oh my God!”
Suddenly, the man ran at the car, jumped on the hood, and pounded at the windshield like a wild animal. He clawed at the edges, and Jeff was sure that if it hadn’t been for the windows being up all the way, the man would be tearing at the doors to get in. Greg let out a scream that sounded quite lady-like to Jeff. Had it not been for the dire circumstances, Jeff would have had a good laugh. But not now. Not at this.
“Go!” the three in the backseat screamed in unison.
Greg needed no further encouragement, savagely twisting the key in the ignition as the man hammered the windshield so hard he left bloody marks on the glass. Shaking with fear, he threw the car into reverse, put pedal to the metal, and sped off. Unfortunately, the man still clung to the hood, clawing at the windshield as Greg raced onto the street, jammed the brakes, and put it in drive.
“What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” Greg's voice was awash with panic. He swerved back and forth, trying in vain to sling the crazed man off the top of his hood. The crazed clerk appeared completely rabid, snarling and whipping his head all around as he clung to the hood.
Becky was sobbing into Jeff's shoulder as they clung to each other, not in passion but in the pure need to feel another human being for support in their total terror. Jeff could feel her heart racing. His was probably racing just as fast.
“Wes, grab my dad's gun from the glove compartment,” Greg ordered. He seemed to have gained some control of himself. Jeff didn't know what Greg intended to do with the gun, because as far as Jeff knew, Greg hadn't really handled guns before. Wes was frozen, staring at the man, who for all intents and purposes, appeared to be deceased.
“Wes, God damn it, open the glove compartment!” Greg repeated. “Gimme the damn gun!”
But Wes wouldn't budge. His eyes bulged as his brain tried to understand just what the hell was going on outside, and he couldn’t decide if he was seeing reality or if he’d just had one too many tokes. So he did nothing, staring at the man in an open-mouthed shocked panic, totally silent except for a small sound from deep in his throat, like a mouse staring at the snake that had come to kill him.
Cursing, Greg reached over to open the glove compartment just as they were coming up on a red light. His eyes on the task at hand, Greg didn't see the approaching vehicle. Becky let out an ear-piercing shriek right before they were broadsided. A set of headlights glared into Jeff’s face, and he turned to see a pair of square headlamps, probably from an older pickup or SUV, he crazily thought in the last tenth of a second before impact, and then an explosion of sound. That was the last thing Jeff remembered.
Then there was silence.
CHAPTER 2
P atricia Oakley examined her lithe, trim figure in her bedroom mirror, liking what she saw looking back at her. She was dressed in a red and white designer dress. A black, shiny, imitation leather belt buckled at her stomach completed the look. She was lean, she still had her curves, and she was looking, in her estimation, hot. Starving had paid off.
She enjoyed being able to wear her wardrobe of stylish dresses, all of them cut to accentuate her figure and make her look almost like a supermodel, but it came with the cost. She liked being skinny, but she didn't like not being able to eat, and she didn’t have the same type of metabolism as some of the other skinny girls. So every time her job threw parties for its employees, she had to decline most of the delicious snacks and settle for eating celery sticks and maybe dragging a finger through some frosting if she’d pay for it later with some extra minutes on the stair stepper. She didn't have much choice, though. In today's world, being skinny and looking good could be the difference in keeping your job.
Pat was a local newscaster for Channel 9 News and co-anchor of the morning news broadcast and the five o’clock evening news. She enjoyed her job but sometimes didn’t like the attention that came with it. People often approached her with their stories, hoping that she would tell them on the news. There were some people whose stories were so exceptional, the sort of human interest stories that she liked because they usually added a little bit of sunshine on gloomy news days. Those that were interesting, she brought them to her boss's attention, but they were few and far between. In this day and age, one could never tell if someone was just making something up for attention, and most of the ‘stories’ she got were just people with an axe to grind.
She went to her closet to look for her white pumps as she sent ano
ther text to her brother, Greg. Greg had not come home last night. Normally, she wouldn't mind, but she needed him to take her daughter to school.
Greg lived with Patricia because he didn’t get along with their parents. For some reason, their parents had been exceptionally hard on Greg growing up. They’d been hard on Patricia too, but they’d been even tougher on Greg. Greg and her father often got into fights so bad, the police had to be called. The last time, Greg had ended up with a shattered cheekbone from a socket wrench. While no charges were pressed, Patricia had had enough and told both of her parents, in no uncertain terms, that she would press charges herself if they ever touched Greg again.
So Greg had come to live with his bigger sister, which at first was probably the best thing for everyone. At the time, Patricia was going through a divorce, so she didn't mind Greg's company. It was useful having a male figure around to help around the house and with her daughter. And Greg loved his niece very much, immediately taking the role somewhere between big brother and father that made him ‘Uncle Greg.’
Patricia's daughter, Natalie, was nine years old, and Patricia knew she was just entering her pre-teen years that led to the difficult teen times. It worried her, but she was doing her best, and Greg was a help. Natalie’s father usually took her to school, but he was out of town on vacation. Patricia didn't like asking him for anything, anyways. Their divorce had gotten so bad that she had changed her daughter's last name to her maiden name, something her ex hated but couldn’t do anything about since Patricia had full custody.
She had been depending on Greg to take her daughter to school all week, since she had to go in to work at six AM, and even then, she was pushing it timewise some days. At first, Greg had been great, helping with getting Natalie to school, but Greg hadn’t been much help lately with all of his drinking and partying as he started to unwind from the stress of living with their parents. Patricia hadn’t really set rules with Greg. She understood from her own wild time after she got out of the house, and so far, he had gotten to do whatever he wanted. Now, she was regretting that decision and thought about how to deal with setting rules for him.