“Thank God!” Mark spotted a car and flagged it down. The two boys explained their predicament and the driver offered to drive them the rest of the way. Twenty minutes later they spotted the familiar truck outside of looming barn. As they entered the store, they too plugged their noses.
“What the hell’s that smell?” Mark said, trying to be funny to cover up his feelings of repulsion.
“Hello? Anybody here?” Adam called.
“They’ve gotta be here, dummy. The truck is out front.” Mark commented sardonically. They huddled together and walked down the aisle, a humorous imitation of the Wizard of Oz. Fritos, Doritos, Chee-tos, oh my! Stomach rumbling, Mark grabbed a bag of Ruffles from the shelf.
“Hey, what’re you doing?” Adam asked.
“I’m hungry. I’ll pay for it, don’t worry.” Mark replied nonchalantly as he proceeded to open the bag. “Oh gross! What is this?” He held up his hands to show his friend the sticky red substance clinging to them.
“Probably just some jelly or something,” Adam concluded unconvincingly. Mark disregarded the fear in his friend’s eyes and continued on down the aisle. They neared the rear of the store and spotted Earl behind the register.
“Hey! Where’s John?” Mark said. Then a little louder, “Hey, Earl. Where’s John? We got tired of waiting for him so we started walking. What’s taking you guys so long?”
“Oh, I guess he’s still making the call,” Earl replied absently. “He’s in the office. It’s right over there,” Earl gestured with his pencil and went back to his non-existent paper work. Uneasily, they flocked to the office door. Unknowingly mimicking John, Adam felt for the switch and flipped it. They entered the room simultaneously and saw John’s hair sticking out over the top of the chair and saw the phone cradle and the twisted cord that led to the mouthpiece.
“Hey buddy, what’s shakin’?” Mark’s question was answered with silence. Confused by his friend’s lack of words, Mark walked up to the chair. He rested his hand on the chair. “Ewwwww! There’s more of that sticky stuff on this chair. It’s all over my hand now. Damnit!” Mark cursed, now angrier than worried, and spun the chair around. To his horror, John’s head toppled off of his shoulders with the force of the spin. Blood soaked his newly purchased jacket. His jeans were now decorated with scarlet splotches of blood. The sight made Mark heave. As he bent over to keep from fainting, he noticed he was standing in a pool of blood. His gorge rose and he puked what little bit of food remained in his stomach.
After emptying himself he stood up and looked at Adam, or what was left of him. While he was throwing up Earl had come in and had been so quick Adam hadn’t had time to scream. All that he could see was an expanding circle of crimson on the floor. Mark, now on auto-pilot, stepped past a preoccupied Earl, started jogging, and by the time he reached the front of the store he was at a full run. He slammed into the doors and began shaking them in a panic. Fucking door’s locked! He shook them a few more times, hoping he had just forgotten how to use a door, but was crushed when he saw the keys dangling from the outer lock through the glass doors. They’re dead. Dead. I can’t believe they’re dead. DEAD. I’m going to be dead! I’m trapped! What the fuck is going on? Mark’s thoughts began to break down and he dropped to the floor in shock. He laid there, remembering his friends and fearing for his life, unsure of what to do until he heard footsteps and the dragging of something metal on the tile floor.
He was in shock, but his survival instincts were strong enough to get him moving again. He quickly crawled from the door to the last aisle, then down to the cooler and leaned against its cool surface. In an attempt to calm his mind with something “normal” he reached into the cooler for a soda. Instead, he pulled out a hand – John’s by the look of the class ring still slipped on the ring finger. He screamed, causing pain to flare up in his already parched throat. Earl turned from the front of the store and headed in the direction of the scream.
He reached the end of the first aisle and spotted Mark next to the cooler. He began walking towards Mark and as he neared him Earl lifted his ax to his shoulder. Mark looked up from John’s hand in time to see Earl. Out of ideas, Mark threw the hand in a desperate attempt to confuse Earl. Momentarily surprised out of his mania, Earl dropped the ax and caught John’s hand. The ax landed on his foot, resulting in Earl’s first scream of the evening. Mark jumped up from his spot in front of the cooler, grabbed a hammer from the hardware display next to the cooler and ran at Olympic speed back to the front of the store. He smashed the hammer through the glass door, turned the keys and burst out into the rain, taking gulps of fresh air as he ran towards the road worried Earl might manage to follow him, one foot and all.
Once by the road he felt safer. Walking against traffic, he hoped to spot an oncoming car. He was completely exhausted and his head felt fuzzy. Shock had set in again and he wanted to lie down, but doing so would surely mean death so he continued walking. Ten minutes of walking began to take a toll on Mark, but when he finally saw headlights he was hysteric. He flagged the driver down and before the woman behind the wheel could offer help he began pounding on her window and yelling about his dead friends.
Unconcerned for the frightened pedestrian, the woman floored the gas and shot moist dirt and mud on Mark’s pants with her back tires as she drove off. He screamed in frustration and continued walking, already beginning to wonder if he would die before the night was over, or not until the morning when the birds found his half-dead body passed out on the road’s shoulder. The previous car hadn’t been gone more than twenty minutes when he saw headlights coming at him again. He wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating, and as the police cruiser came into full view he was sure he had totally lost it. No way. My luck isn’t this good. The old black and white caprice pulled up alongside Mark. The officer looked Mark up and down through his window before rolling it down.
“What’re you doing out here, son? You know, it’s illegal to hitchhike.”
“Officer, you gotta hel—“
“Actually, I’m the Sheriff,” the man behind the wheel interjected patronizingly.
“It doesn’t matter, my friends are dead! I need you to help me. There’s some crazy guy back at the gas station down the road. He killed both my friends and he tried to kill me! I can’t believe they’re de—”
“Slow down there. I’ve got some papers up front and you’re soaking wet, so hop in the back and we can go check this out.”
“Check it out? I’m not going back there! Didn’t you hear what I just said? He killed my friends!”
“Hey! Do as I say and get in the goddamn car before I arrest you for hitchhiking. Even if you are telling the truth, I need you to confirm who you claim killed your friends.”
“Fine, but I’m not getting out unless that bastard’s dead,” Mark informed the sheriff as he got into the back of the cruiser and slammed the door.
“Don’t matter much, son. You can’t get out even if you wanted to.” The Sheriff’s comment made Mark uneasy, but he tried to justify it as hick humor. These guys think it’s funny to scare out-of-towners, that’s all. Mark closed his eyes and immediately began to dose, the sounds of the man in the front seat muffled by his semi-consciousness.
“This is Harry, you copy?” The sheriff says into a walkie-talkie.
“Yeah, I copy. You find him?”
“Roger that. ETA five minutes, over and out.” The sheriff lays the walkie-talkie on the passenger seat and then bangs on the metal gate separating the front and back seat. “Hey, you know you scared the hell out of some lady, right? She called our office and reported some guy wandering down the highway, bloody shirt and acting crazy.”
“Sorry, I’ve never witnessed my best friends begin killed before,” Mark replied sarcastically. The sheriff’s attitude was frustrating Mark and he was already drafting a letter to the asshole’s superior in his head.
The sheriff picked up the walkie-talkie again and spoke. “Earl, you still there?”
“Yeah, but I’m hurting. That little shit made me drop my ax, over.”
“That’s what you get for being so sloppy. What did I tell you about leaving witnesses? He almost got away – scared some woman half to death. You’re lucky I found him when I did, over.”
“You found him, that’s all that matters, over.”
“I’ll be there in a minute, have the gear ready, over and out.” Mark sat up in the back seat as he realized for the second time that day hitchhiking in the empty desert was a terrible idea.
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