“What time is it?” he asked, ignoring Kevin’s complaint of a full bladder.
“You hear me dude? I gotta pee.”
“I heard ‘ya.” The Buick coughed, protesting the high speed. Pete eyed the dashboard, the needle flirted with E. “You’re lucky, Kev-o,” he said, passing the joint. “We need gas. What time is it?”
Kevin took a deep puff, holding the embers close to his watch so he could get a reading. “One AM.”
“Making good time. Twelve hours to sun and bikinis.”
Pete saw a sign ahead, its worn lettering partially camouflaged by tree branches. The pot had blurred his sights some, but on approach he could read it clearly:
Jerry’s Gas and Convenience
Exit 34, One Mile
Kevin swung his fists. “Hurry it up before I pee my pants. Bladder’s pounding bad.”
The exit came into view. Pete eased up on the gas and followed the curved off-ramp, the Buick gasping as it fell away from high velocity. Instantly, they found themselves in a wooded area, the road heading only west at the end.
The gas station was nowhere in sight.
This immediate predicament was too painful for Pete to contemplate, every second not on the road was more time wasted not on the beach. But he did need gas--and Kevin needed to pee--and without a fill-up he’d be spending Spring Break in the backwoods of Nowhere, Virginia with a half-eaten bag of Doritos and a six of Coke.
Pete followed the dark road, driving a couple of miles, the environment growing more and more desolate along the way. Trees crowded in from the sides, their leaves and branches full of moving shadows. Pete imagined these woods as being the perfect place to hide a body--if you had to, of course, and the thought of that sent shivers through him. As strangers in these parts, they could very well be considered a good pair of bodies to hide.
“Where the hell is it? Man, I gotta pee. Bad.”
“Shut-up already. With all your yapping, now I gotta pee.”
Pete and Kevin had been taking turns driving every two hours more or less since leaving the University of Rochester eight hours earlier. Pete had pushed way past the speed limit despite Kevin’s THC-induced paranoia telling him to slow down. Pete had just laughed, the pot transposing his worries into care-free spirits.
The car coughed.
Pete eyed the fuel gauge. “Still got enough gas to get us around town.” He hoped the skepticism didn’t show in his voice.
Kevin shifted uneasily in his seat, the vinyl squeaking fartily beneath his jeans. “Where the hell are we?”
“Over there!” Pete shouted, pointing. A gas station and convenience store came into view a few yards from the roadside. Kevin dug a fist into in his crotch, his dick sensing a bathroom within proximity. If there wasn’t he’d pull it out and pee right on the wheel of Pete’s LeSabre. Bank on that.
The amount of light in the small graveled lot was feeble, a single bulb inside a colorless sign out front that leaned at a crooked angle: “Jerry’s Gas and Convenience”. Convenience my ass, Pete thought as he pulled into the lot alongside a pair of battered pumps, each appearing to possess as much capability to hold gas as a sieve could water.
Pete burped cola and he and Kevin scurried from the car to the side of the station, where they found no restroom. Kevin opted for ten feet of wooded coverage, and he scampered behind the station, bravely unzipping along the way. Pete followed, side-stepping a few oaks until he found a good thick tree to water. Soft steam slithered around his ankles as his piss dug a wet hole in the foliage. Groans of relief emanated from behind Kevin’s tree.
“Feel good?”
Kevin groaned. “Never been happier in my life.”
With the suddenness of crashing thunder, an engine’s roar shredded the stillness of the night, shaking the leaves in the trees and the earth beneath them, silencing the wildlife. Slightly alarmed, Pete quickly zipped up and found Kevin stepping from around his tree, shaking a leg.
The sound of the engine tapered to an idle rumble, like a lion’s purr. They paced back around the side of the station house and saw a big black fuel truck, a Mack, sitting at the opposite side of the pump station. It was quite eerie looking, its paint job a real choicy black, glossy, the shine so savage it appeared to be melting. Steam billowed from beneath the huge cylindrical tanker, hot puffs rising up in geyser-like spurts. Pete eyed the cab but couldn’t see in; its windows were tinted black.
“Bad-ass looking truck,” Kevin offered.
Pete gave him an uncertain gaze. The truck was intimidating, and he wondered what kind of guy it took to drive such a monster. “It says pay first, then pump.” He wanted to be inside, away from the truck.
Pete reached for the door of the store but it bounded open and a gangly sort of man appeared. His overalls shifted loosely upon his frame as he walked across the lot. The name “Jerry” was stitched on the breast pocket. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses rested lazily upon Jerry’s nose, his teeth showing dark gaps when he spoke. “Hey, I didn’t order a fuel-up. What is this?” He neared the front of the cab, arms on his hips, taking no notice of Pete’s LeSabre as he yelled up to the blacked-out windows. “I ain’t payin’ so you best stop pumpin’, ya hear?”
Pete caught sight of a thick black hose running from the base of the truck’s tank into the fill-hole in the ground, a few feet from the pump island.
No one was attending it.
Jerry stepped alongside the front wheels, looked up and knocked on the driver’s side door. When he received no reply he made his way around the front of the cab into the steamy glare of headlights. Moths and beetles fluttered in great numbers and Jerry swatted at them, eying the strange rig, his pleas going unanswered.
“Think we should go inside and pay?” Pete asked, unsure if they would be permitted to fill up while the pumps were being serviced.
Kevin peeked through the beetle-specked door. “There’s another guy behind the counter. C’mon.”
With no warning there came an ear-piercing hiss, and then a vicious scream. Pete and Kevin both recoiled, staggered indecisively along the side of the building. When they spun around, something outlandish and indescribable met their gazes.
A great cloud of steam was billowing from the truck’s grill, like a dragon’s snort. It cooked Jerry in an instant, the man’s face and hands turning deep red and then white as blisters coated his skin like boiled milk. When the steam stopped he stumbled and fell at the foot of Pete’s Buick, much the way a football player careens into the end zone. Arms forward, flat out.
A harsh scream came from inside the store. A fatter, much younger version of Jerry came barreling out, hands pinned to dough-boy cheeks like a pair of meat hooks buried in choice flank.
Something exploded. Pete and Kevin covered themselves with their arms. The young-fat-Jerry fell in his tracks, glass showering all around him. When Pete looked toward the rig he saw that the gas pump displays had shattered, their jagged fragments scattered on the roof of his car and beyond.
Fat-Jerry blithered something indecipherable, bottom lip trembling uncontrollably. Pete got a good firm grip on Kevin’s arm. He looked back and forth between boiling Jerry and stunned Fat-Jerry, unsure of what to do.
For a moment an odd silence ensued. Remarkably, boiled-Jerry had tried to stand. He made it to his knees, wavering like a scarecrow in the wind. Then, suddenly, his posture changed. It stiffened up, as if being electrocuted. His blistering face took on a look of sheer unexpectation, swelled eyes widening like a deer’s in car-shot. It was a grotesque sight, his eyeglasses dangling from a stump of an ear, chunklets of his face plopping down onto the hard gravel like scraps of bait. The man’s blistered hands moved up and down, blindly grasping at his stomach where a growing bloodstain appeared, fanning out to the size of a pancake.
His overalls started moving. Unbelievably, it appeared as though something was charging out from his stomach, tearing through the frayed denim fabric.
Trembling wildly, Pete tried to make heads or
tails at what he was seeing. His mind told him otherwise, but what he saw was the nozzle of a gas pump emerging from Jerry’s stomach. By the time he accepted this fact, Jerry had slammed face first in the gravel, sending up a cloud of dust around him. A steel handle rose from his back, the black rubber hose leading back to pump number one. It whirled about like a possessed jump-rope.
Fat-Jerry fell to his knees and started crying (strangely enough, his name patch indeed said Jerry), his teeth also showing gaps. Strings of drool dripped from his lips as he called for “D-Daddy” over and over. He staggered on his knees towards his fallen father, those pudgy fingers now pressing red blemishes into his cheeks. Pete wanted to grab the boy and pull him away, but he remained in place, too frightened, or smart really, to make a move.
A cloud of insects formed about the dead man. Blood seeped out from beneath him in a flat circle, filling the grooves in the graveled lot, looking like veins. Fat-Jerry, eyes bulging madly, couldn’t have been more than five feet from his father when a sudden spray of gas shot out from the pump handle beneath the dead man, sending the corpse a foot in the air. The boy stopped, horrid fear scrawled on his face as the hose again came to life, whipping up and down, lugging dead-Jerry around with its every move. Pete could hear the man’s bones shattering against the gravel and front bumper of Pete’s LeSabre, each powerful whack ripping more and more of him away until his head--or what was left of it--tumbled off like a football. Absurdly, Pete was reminded of his attempts to unhitch a stubborn booger that had parked itself at the end of one of his fingers during the car ride down.
The rig hissed loudly, steam once again rising from the undercarriage. Pete smelled a horrible stench, that of sulfur, its reek the final sobering point that broke his paralysis. He lunged at Fat-Jerry, grabbing him by the supports of his overalls, yanking his bulk away from the wilding gas hose, which had now loosed itself of approximately 75% of Jerry’s shredded body. The two staggered away, Pete nearly tumbling down as the boy’s feet tripped up holes in the gravel. Kevin ran over and helped out, grabbing Fat-Jerry and pulling the door open to the station with his free hand.
They went inside. The door slammed shut behind them, nearly drowning out the hissing steam and sound of Jerry’s bones being smashed all over. Inside, country music blared from a tinny radio behind the counter. Pete looked outside at the black Mack. Dark shadows waxed and waned about the strange rig as it continued to fill the pumps, its ghostly steam recessing to tendril-like wisps. Beyond, the “Jerry’s Gas and Convenience” sign flickered wildly. Not a vehicle passed in the road. He tried not to think too much about what just happened for fear of going crazy.
“Phone’s out.” Kevin’s voice breached the eerie mood. Pete turned and saw him standing behind the counter, head shaking, trying to dial out on an old rotary. Strangely enough, he seemed to be holding his composure.
The same couldn’t be said for Fat-Jerry. The portly young man had found a seat on the floor by the soda cooler and was banging his greasy-haired head against the glass. His thick hands fluttered restlessly in the air, grasping at nothing.
Pete again looked outside. The hose and handle had finally rid itself of the last of Jerry and retreated into pump number one. The man’s parts were all over. Pete noticed an arm hanging lazily over the hood of the LeSabre, the light from the sign revealing insects about it in a cloud.
“Pete--what the fuck is going on?”
Kevin’s face had changed. Now he looked amazed, eyes glassed over, teeth glittering through a half-choked smile. It could have been the pot, but Pete figured he finally had a chance to think about what just happened. Fat-Jerry started crying, counterpointing the sound of his head against the cooler. The country music on the radio changed songs, a new one from Travis Tritt.
Pete swallowed. “I-I don’t know.” Who could offer an explanation? He walked behind the counter and brushed next to Kevin. He picked up the phone, tried it himself. Indeed, dead.
“We need to relax...”
Kevin grinned defensively. “I’m relaxed. Gomer Pyle over there needs to get a grip.” Fat-Jerry’s cries had risen in volume. He sounded like a cat approaching orgasm, eyes bulging with each head-whack. He looked horribly lost, frightened, chubby hands still fluttering nonsensically in the air.
“This is his territory. We’re gonna need his help if we’re to get out of here.” Pete paced over to the boy, the muscles in his legs tightening like straps. He caught a glimpse of himself in the small plastic mirror at the top of a cheap sunglasses display. He looked bad, face streaked white, eyes as dark as coal.
He kneeled in front of Fat-Jerry. From this position he could hear the echoes of the black Mack’s rumbling. The sound surrounded him, prickled his skin, as though its jagged vibrations had saturated the walls and rode the air around him. Pete grabbed Fat-Jerry by the hair to stop his head from rocking. The boy’s face dripped in sweat, twitched and tweaked as if poked by invisible fingers. His bottom lip was a cup for drool.
“We need your help.”
The boy wailed, tears pouring from his eyes. Pete smelled smoke and turned to see Kevin opening a pack of Marlboros, attempting his first smoke ever. Pot yes, tobacco no. Stuff’ll kill you. The cigarette shook wildly in his hand as he stared out at the idling truck.
“Is there a CB radio anywhere?”
Finally Fat-Jerry caught on. He looked at Pete, watery eyes showing pupils no bigger than pinpoints. His cries had transformed to blurts and sobs. He nodded.
“Pete...” Kevin called out, quietly.
“Where, Jerry? Where’s the CB?”
“Pete, I think you should see this...”
Frustrated, Pete tore himself away from Fat-Jerry before he could get an answer. He marched down the snack aisle and found Kevin standing frozen by the door, peering outside, cigarette on the floor by his feet.
The moon had climbed over the rear of the building, shining coldly upon the glossy surface of the tanker. The Mack’s engine still rumbled throatily. But from somewhere else a new noise ensued, a harsh metallic clanging that was nearly musical. Kevin pointed. Pete looked and shuddered.
The hose from pump number two had come alive. It danced like a cobra alongside the LeSabre, slamming against the car in attempt to drive its steel nozzle into the gas tank. Each driving contact produced the harshest of tolls.
“What’s it doing?”
Kevin frowned. “It’s giving us what we came for, I think.”
No sooner had Kevin’s assumption made sense in Pete’s head, a loud popping note rang out, the steel nozzle finally breaking through the car’s framework. Hissing, the dials on the pump whirled crazily.
“Now what?” Pete said, owning up to the fact that his car had come under new ownership.
“Think it’ll run?”
“What?”
“Your car.”
“You want to go and find out?”
That silenced the conversation. The two men stared dumbfounded, the truck revving, a slight shimmer of steam rising up. Its ebony surface shined like the exoskeleton of a huge beetle. Pete wouldn’t have been surprised if a pair of giant wings sprouted and it took to flight.
The dials stopped spinning on the pump. The hose pulled away from the car and shot back into its place like a retreating tape-measure, the handle wrenched tightly into its cradle. Pete’s car sat quietly at the pumps, waiting for them.
Something loud crashed. Pete backpedaled from the door, unknowing as to where the unexpected din had come. Kevin cowered by the edge of the register, his eyes rolling toward the back of the store. Pete looked and saw Fat-Jerry spread-eagled on the ground, the entire shelf of candy bars next to him strewn out on the floor like confetti at a parade.
Pete ran over. “You all right?” He gripped his upper arm. Soft wet skin slid about in his grasp. Fat-Jerry tried to stand--slowly this time, a lesson learned from an unsuccessful first attempt. Pete gently assisted the way.
“T-The CB...” Fat-Jerry stammered.
Pete could see that Fat-Jerry was no older than his early teens. Although he carried the bulk of a man, his face was as youthful as any kid’s that age, freckles, dimples, not a whisker in sight. Pete figured he must’ve spent a good deal of time eating daddy’s candy bars.
Kevin had now joined the crowd, puffing nervously on another cigarette.
“Where Jerry? Where’s the CB?”
Jerry stood. His glassy eyes stared past Pete and Kevin. His legs twitched as if he were working kinks out of them. “D-Daddy’s truck.”
“And where’s that, Jerry?” Pete felt as if he were talking to a child who was hiding something of value.
“Outside.” He pointed to the side opposite where Pete and Kevin had taken to pee.
“So all we have to do,” Kevin said, “is call for someone to help us.”
Sounded easy, but Pete knew that option wasn’t an odds-on-favorite. Who in God’s name would challenge such a beast as that black truck? Not the local-yokels. They’d about face and go hide in church quicker than you could say biscuits and gravy. And then who amongst the three of them would be brave--or stupid--enough to go out and get the pick-up?
Pete gave Kevin an insidious glance. Kevin tightened his grin. No way in hell he was going out there.
“Jerry?” Pete gently asked. “Can you work the CB?”
Jerry nodded warily, his doughy face unflinching.
“You’re gonna need to call the cops. Can you do that?”
Jerry nodded again. “Channel fourteen--that’s for emergencies only. Daddy told me so.”
Pete turned and Kevin shrugged. Neither of them would be able to work the CB anyway. They were city boys. Outside, the truck revved louder, as if in suspect of their plan. “Does your daddy keep a gun here?”
For the first time Jerry looked right at Pete, mixed emotions contorting his face. “I-I’m not supposed to know about it.”
Demons, Freaks & Other Abnormalities Page 10