I work at a small town gas station (part 6)

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The goons were on the upper side of middle-aged, dressed in dark clothes with heavy boots and leather gloves. The shorter of the two walked up to me with a swagger, joining his friend on the other side of the counter. He flicked his jacket open and rested his hand on his hip, showing off the gun holstered in his belt. The taller guy reached over and grabbed a praline from the display next to the register, ripped open the package with his teeth, and took a bite.
“This is on the house,†he said before devouring the whole thing in three chomps.
I could tell what they were going for. This was supposed to be intimidating. But it came across more like a whitebread youth pastor trying to rap about how drugs are bad. That is to say, it was sad, and I felt sorry for them. I was actually a little embarrassed for all of us.
I never got their names, but my media-saturated mind saw the parallels, and I instantly thought of them as an off-brand Harry and Marv (and if you don’t know who the wet bandits are, I feel sorry for you, too).
The taller, sloppier one--Marv--grabbed another handful of the pralines and stuffed them into his coat pocket, flashing me a smile full of broken teeth and adding, “So are these.â€
A strange thought occured to me in that moment. If the radio transmission was right, (and I had no reason to think otherwise) I was destined to meet an attacker at the gas station in fifty-two hours for a kill-or-be-killed showdown. But for that prophecy to be true, it presupposed that I would stay alive for at least fifty-two more hours. For this magic radio to be correct, I was effectively immortal for two more days… I wasn’t going to go testing this theory, but it provided a little comfort to this ridiculous situation.
“So, let me guess,†I said, “You guys think I have a nice place here and it would be a shame if something were to happen to it. Right?â€
Harry and Marv laughed to each other, then Harry said “Relax, Jack. We don’t want to cause any trouble for you.†Holy crap, he even sounds like Joe Pesci. This was unbelievable. “A mutual friend of ours asked us to stop by and have a conversation with you about reopening negotiations. We understand that you’ve got reservations about whether or not you want to sell the place. I’d be happy to offer some wisdom, as a friend. But in order for that to happen, well, we’d have to be friends, wouldn’t we? You know, I get along great with my friends.†He smacked Marv on the arm and asked, “Ain’t that right?â€
Marv started walking, circling the register and saying with a soft chuckle, “Yeah, we get along great.â€
Harry rested the baseball bat on the counter between us, daring me to try something stupid. He waited until Marv was right behind me before he continued, “That’s because we’re friends. Now, people who don’t want to be my friend, well that’s another story altogether. If you don’t want to be my friend, then that means you want to be my enemy. And I get nervous around enemies. I gotta protect my friends from my enemies. You understand that, don’t ya, Jack?â€
“Not at all,†I answered, “but please, don’t let that stop you. I’m finding this schtick to be incredibly entertaining.â€
That flipped his smile upside down. He reached out, grabbed his bat, and rested it on his shoulder, bouncing in anticipation as he said, “It’s too bad you want to do this the hard way.â€
He nodded to Marv, who swung his bat down at the counter, narrowly missing my face as it whipped by and connected with the Russian radio, smashing it into pieces.
They both howled with laughter as Harry swung his bat and knocked the broken appliance to the ground, where he then proceeded to go to town on it, Office-Space style.
Right then, the back door scratched open and the two men went silent and clutched their bats defensively, watching as Jerry waltzed into the room. They kept their eyes trained on this unexpected wild card, but he didn’t seem to mind them one bit. He just wandered straight into the middle of the shakedown until he was standing on the other side of the counter from me, then he looked down at the broken radio and asked, “Yo. We getting robbed again?â€
Harry pulled back his coat and tapped his gun, saying, “Alright pal, let’s not do anything stupid here.â€
That’s when I knew for certain that Jerry was about to do something stupid.
“Wait a second!†Jerry screamed. He swung his head around and looked at me, his eyes widening in exaggerated horror. “Oh my god! Jack!†He reached a hand across the counter and put it gently on my face, tilting my chin up slightly as if to get a better view. “Look what they did to you. Who did this to your face? Who hurt you? Tell me…†He turned dramatically and pointed straight at Harry. “Was it him? You’re going to pay for what you did to my friend!â€
Marv tried to calm things down a little, “Alright, cool it buddy, nobody touched your friend-â€
â€Hey!†Jerry screamed back at him, “You shut you beautiful mouth right now, you gorgeous specimen!â€
Marv seemed a little rattled. “Wait, what?â€
“I said shut it, you sexy beast!â€
Harry tried to gain back control of the situation, pulling the gun from its holster and extending it towards Jerry.
I was quick to say, “Oh, you really don’t want to do that, dude.â€
“Yeah?†he said back with a smile and that unearned confidence one only gets from possessing both a deadly weapon and the complete ignorance of the insanity about to ensue. I had neither of those things, so all I could do was brace myself. “Why not? What’s he gonna do?â€
“What am I gonna do?!†bellowed Jerry as he held out a balled up fist for them both to see. “What am I gonna do? Here’s what I’m gonna do. First, I’m gonna punch you, right in the kisser. Then, I’m gonna break your eskimo kisser. Then, I’m gonna give you two black butterfly kissers. And then, I’m gonna kiss ya.†He stood up straight and said this last part through closed teeth. “Only then will you have my permission to die.â€
The man took a step back and looked at me as if to ask Is this guy serious? I went ahead and nodded.
“I think you’re under the misconception that we’re playing a game here.†He put his gun away, then clutched the baseball bat with two hands. “Allow me to correct that.â€
He swung the bat into the closest thing within striking distance--a canned soda display that I had painstakingly put together into a giant pyramid the night before. A couple of the cans exploded as the display toppled and fell to the ground. The goons both cackled with delight.
“Aw ****, yeah!†Jerry screamed before kicking over a chip stand. Before any of us knew what was going on, Jerry had flipped over an ice well and chucked a gnome across the store into the cold drink case, shattering the glass upon impact. “Ya’ll wanna do this?! Then let’s do this!â€
Marv jumped back as Jerry came behind the register to grab a chair, which he then started smashing into the walls and shelves while cackling and screaming “Anarchy! Anarchy! Anarchy!â€
“Hey! Hey!†screamed the armed goon until Jerry finally stopped.
“What?â€
“Calm the **** down.â€
“Make me!â€
Marv cut into the conversation with a soft, “Hey, guys?â€
I turned to look at the man standing next to me and noticed that he wasn’t looking too hot all of a sudden. He was visibly wincing, closing his eyes tightly and pressing his free hand against his ear.
I asked, “You okay there?â€
His partner yelled out, “What’s wrong?â€
Marv dropped his bat to the ground so he could use both hands to cover his ears (and that’s the story of how I came into possession of Ricardo!) Then, he started screaming, “What is that whistling? Jesus ****! Can you please turn that down?†He fell into the cigarette display and started making some noises that sounded an awful lot like gagging. The last words he managed to get out were, “I… I don’t… uh… I don’t feel so good.â€
Harry actually had a note of concern in his voice. “You okay, man? What’s wrong?â€
“Hey,†I said gently, “You can have a seat over there at that booth if you want to sit down for a second.â€
Right then, Marv started barfing. Like, crazy, projectile barfing. Really getting some distance with it, too. Sadly, this is nothing new for the gas station. Customers come in here and vomit more often than you’d imagine. Hell, I’ve barfed in here at least a dozen times. The only weird thing was, this wasn’t normal barf. Poor Marv was expelling untold amounts of dark red liquid. Just pure blood pouring out of his mouth, down his shirt, and all over the floor behind the counter.
“Groooss!†sang Jerry before tossing his chair across the gas station into the hot dog roller.
Marv’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell into his puddle of blood. Harry ran behind the counter, grabbed his friend by the collar of his shirt, then proceeded to drag him out of the building to their car, yelling out pathetic threats and warnings not to call the cops or try and follow them.
I immediately called O’Brien and told her she should swing by when she got a chance, emphasizing that there was no hurry. When she showed up a half an hour later, I was still sweeping up broken glass, and hadn’t gotten to the blood yet, so all she saw was the bloody trail leading from behind the counter to the front doors like somebody had dragged a body away. She immediately drew her gun.
“What the **** happened?â€

---

O’Brien and I left the gas station and went to a little diner in town called Marilyn’s. We’d gotten into a habit of eating lunch together two or three times a week, but after the carnival I was worried that those days were behind us.
When she asked if I felt like grabbing a bite, it was a huge relief.
That relief started to wear off during the ten minute wait for our food to show up, during which O’Brien said next to nothing and spent almost the entire time on her phone.
By the time we got our food, I wasn’t exactly hungry anymore.
“Is everything okay?†I finally worked up the nerve to ask.
O’Brien put her phone on the table.
“Of course not.â€
“That is a fair answer, but I meant, is everything okay between us? You seem like something’s on your mind.â€
She didn’t answer right away, taking a second to stare out the window at the diner’s parking lot. Then she looked back to me and said, “You were right. It’s not my job to protect you. I mean, it is, literally my job to keep you alive, but I shouldn’t be keeping you in the dark on everything. There’s something about to happen in this town, and you deserve to know what’s going on.â€
“Oh. Okay.â€
“First, let me ask you this: have you noticed the other workers acting weird lately?â€
“You mean Jerry and Rosa? Do… do I really need to answer that?â€
She laughed. It was the first time I’d seen her smile in a long time, and I instantly felt much better. But it was only for a split second, and then she went back to her usual serious self.
“Those guys who hit the gas station today, any idea what they wanted?â€
I could tell O’Brien was struggling, forcing herself into an honesty breakthrough, and it felt hypocritical for me to let her do that while keeping my own secrets. And if there was anyone I could trust, it was her. So I told the truth.
“Yeah, about that. I was waiting for the right moment to tell you guys, but… well, here it is: I’m the new owner of the gas station. Mamaw and Pops left it to me in their will. That Kevin-Spacey-looking doctor guy has been trying to get me to sell it to him for some reason, and now I think he’s trying to intimidate me by hiring goons to come into the store and barf blood all over the place.â€
She cracked another, unexpected smile. “This may be hard for you to believe, but I’m actually a pretty good investigator.â€
“I believe it. You’re smarter than any other cop I know. But I don’t understand what that has to do with-â€
“I already knew about you being the new gas station owner. That kind of thing is public record.â€
“Oh. Well that’s actually a relief. What else do you know?â€
“I know that Howard has been buying up properties all over town. This is what he does. He moves into a ****hole community, taking over just enough of the businesses that everyone either works for or depends on him, then he strangles it for all its worth. Any holdouts go out of business. He’s basically the human version of Walmart.â€
“Gross.â€
“Yeah, I know.â€
She picked up her burger and took a bite. I still had no appetite.
“Well,†I asked, “what else is going on?â€
She carefully put the food down, took a sip of her drink, then picked up her napkin to wipe her lips. She was stalling for some reason.
“Now there’s something I need to tell you.â€
Her phone started ringing, and I caught a quick glimpse of the caller ID before she snatched it up. The name of the caller wasn’t actually a name--just two words. “Answer Now.â€
She scowled and then said to me, “I have to take this. Finish your food.†Then she got up and walked outside.
I picked up a fry, took a bite, then gave up on the meal altogether. I was feeling the stress big time, and not just because I knew I only had fifty-ish more hours to prepare for a showdown where I was either going to kill somebody or finally die. No, I had something much bigger than that weighing on me. O’Brien was keeping secrets. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t good.
When she got back to the table, I could see that she was ******. She wasn’t the sort of person to bottle up those feelings. When she was mad, it showed, and I always admired that about her.
“Let me guess. Work?â€
She tossed her phone onto the table, then fell into her seat. “Yeah, something like that.â€
I almost didn’t want to bring it up again, but I knew I had to ask. “What was it you wanted to tell me before that perfectly-timed interruption?â€
She looked at my food. “You’re not going to eat?â€
I shrugged. “Probably not.â€
She leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table, then said, “I think you should sell the gas station. It’s not worth it. Whatever’s going on, it’s dangerous and stupid and there’s no reason for you to get caught up in it. Take the money and run, get out of town and never look back.â€
She studied my face for a reaction, and I tried my best to hide what I was thinking. What I was thinking, of course, was how O’Brien would never tell me to back down. And in that moment, I was certain of one thing. This was not Amy. It couldn’t be. I wanted to scream at her, â€Who are you? What did you do with my friend?â€
I was positive… positive that this must have been some kind of imposter.
And then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t.
Just as quickly as that certainty hit, it faded away. What was I thinking? Of course this is O’Brien. She’s actually giving me good advice because she’s worried about my well being. That sudden mistrust… I know what that was. One of the telltale symptoms of the final stages of my defective brain finally calling it a night. The doctors warned me that it was only a matter of time before paranoia set in. Before I completely lost my grip on the objective universe. Before I convinced myself that everybody around me was a monster and I pushed them all away until-
“You okay?†Her words snapped me back to reality.
“Sorry, I was lost in thought.â€
“I could tell.â€
“I don’t want to sell the gas station.â€
“You may not have a choice, you know.â€
“I know. We aren’t exactly making any money. I foresee that being a huge problem eventually.â€
I had no idea how right I was.

---

The next fifty hours sped by in a blur.
One might expect that I would have taken the ample time and advanced notice to come up with some kind of plan, maybe learn some karate or stock up on weapons and health potions (that’s a thing, right?). A reasonable person may have even gone so far as to avoid the gas station altogether and lock themselves in a panic room or something. But I knew that anything I did to try and outrun fate was a fool’s errand. Someone was coming for me, and if I left it would only be delaying the inevitable. At least this way I knew when they were going to show up.
I wasn’t completely unprepared. I made a point to actually arm myself for once.
Ricardo was sitting under the counter within arm’s reach, and it was going to stay there until… well… just until.
Now, I know how all of this sounds. It sounds like I was being stupid. But I ran the logic of the situation around in my mind repeatedly, and came up with one consistent conclusion: this was a problem for which there were only stupid solutions. And the only piece of control I had was going into it exactly as the radio described, otherwise I’d be leaving the whole thing to chance. And at least this way, whatever the threat was, I could face it in a controlled environment and make sure nobody else was around that might end up as collateral damage.
I spent the night before the attack transcribing Jerry’s tape of the Russian radio naming all the people in town that had been “targeted†or “replaced.†An hour into the tape was when it abruptly made the switch.
“Kathy Young has been targeted. Paul Bailey has been targeted. Jose Cruz has been replaced…†A short pause disrupted the wave-like rhythm that I had gotten so accustomed to, and then, “No… Grape... Tequila... Trombone... Fix... Montauk... Paris…â€
The nonsense words began.
I had looked for some kind of hidden message in the transmission, but had come up short. No matter how I looked at those words, there was nothing there. Just random noise. (It was interesting, though, to realize that not a single word was ever said more than one time...)
I let the rest of the tape play as I looked at the list of people I’d written up. Some of them I knew, but most of them were just names, as devoid of meaning as the random words. Still, it was an alarming number of people. About seventy percent of them fell into the “targeted†category. The rest were supposedly “replaced.†I still had no idea what any of it meant.
I reached for my good pen (the fancy one I save for special occasions) and started circling names in the notebook. Everyone that I recognized, starting with old Aggie. There were others, some people from my high school, a few gas station regulars, some folks that I knew just from their reputations at the gossip mill. In the end, there were fourteen people I knew. Of which, three had been “replaced.†Still, I wasn’t friendly enough with any of them to be able to call them up and ask if they had been pod-personed, so there wasn’t much I could do with this information.
I went to switch off the tape when I heard something that gave me pause.
“Green... Eternal... Left... Jack... Port... Nigh...â€
Did the radio just say my name?
I waited and listened to the rest of the transmission, all the way until the tape finally cut out, but it never said anything else that made any sense with or without context, and if the gas station had been a little busier, I might have just let myself assume that it was nothing more than a complete coincidence.
But business was slower than a dead turtle and I had nothing better to do than obsess over this, so I rewound the tape to the place where it started saying random words. “No… Grape... Tequila... Trombone…†Then I turned the page in my notebook to a fresh sheet and started writing.
By the time I had all the words down, I’d given myself a nasty writer’s cramp. It took just over an hour to put it all on paper, and when I was done I studied the words to see if there was anything to them. Any kind of pattern. Any hidden clue or thread to connect the nonsense.
When I noticed it, I almost fell out of my chair.
The pen I’d used to circle the names had bled through the previous sheet, leaving fourteen faint circles on the one I’d been copying the random words onto. (That’s the problem with good pens, I guess.) They were barely perceptible, and I had ignored them as I wrote.
But now I could see that those circles lined up perfectly, and if I read only the words that were written inside the transference circles, they spelled out a message as clear as day.
“No matter what he chooses Jack will lose and die alone in pain gravyâ€
I read it a couple times just to make sure I was reading it right.
What the hell is pain gravy?
I turned back to the page of names, inspected that last one and decided maybe I didn’t actually know that guy after all. He had a very common name.
I flicked back to the random word page and tried it again without the last word.
“No matter what he chooses Jack will lose and die alone in painâ€
I yelled at the paper, “Oh yeah?! Well what do you know, anyway? You’re just a dumb old sheet of paper!†Just to show it who was boss, I tore it into a thousand pieces and tossed them into the air like confetti. It was satisfying until those pieces floated down and settled all around me and I realized that now I had another mess to clean up.

---

The sun rose and set on my final day as if everything were perfectly normal, and before I knew it, the time was upon me.
I’d made a point to write the work schedule to ensure that I was alone at the gas station for four whole hours before and after the alleged showdown. I also made a point to schedule the new guy, Daniel, to come in after. Just in case I didn’t survive the night, I wanted to know that it wasn’t going to be Rosa or Jerry who had to find my body.
I felt horrible for keeping this secret, but if anyone else knew what the radio had said to me, it would have fudged up the chances, not to mention it would have put them in danger.
I spent the very last hour writing a goodbye letter, which I then folded up and stuffed into my wallet. I was basically as ready as I was going to get, but still the anticipation was driving me crazy.
I checked the clock on my phone about ten million times in the minutes leading up to the moment of the scheduled showdown.
Was the radio transmission being exact when it said fifty-two hours? Or was there some wiggle room, like fifty-two and some change? Or was it simply messing with me? Or was it saying fifty-two metaphorical hours? Or was there a chance I heard it wrong? Or… did I simply hallucinate the whole thing? That was certainly a possibility.
Then I saw it, the black truck pulling into our parking lot, right on time.
My heart started beating faster, and I checked under the counter one last time to make sure my baseball bat hadn’t sprouted legs and danced away.
Still there.
When I looked back up, I almost had a small heart attack and screamed â€JESUS!†at the unexpected site of another lawn gnome on the counter right in front of me.
I grabbed him by the tip of his pointy hat and tossed him into the lost and found box right as the front doors opened and two men walked into the gas station.
Suddenly, I felt woefully underprepared.
They had me outnumbered, and either one of these guys could probably beat me in a one-on-one fight with their eyes closed. The shorter of the two still had at least a foot on me in height, and to top it all off, they were both strapped. Their guns hung in holsters at their sides, along with zip ties and mace cans. They were pretty much ready to go to war, and from the looks of them, my puny weapon wasn’t going to do **** unless they wanted to be sportsmanlike and give me a ten second head start.
To top the whole look off, they were both wearing armor. Well, flak jackets anyway, but still a lot more than my jeans, t-shirt, and hoodie.
One of them walked up to my counter with a smile, and I considered the viability of simply running away. But these guys looked able enough that they could probably outrun me. And even if not, I couldn’t outrun a bullet.
The Russian radio gave me a two percent chance of surviving this without advanced knowledge?
“Hey.†The guy said. “Remember me?â€
I searched my memory and came up blank. But then I read the wording on his flak jacket. Fugitive Recovery Agent.
“Oh yeah, you guys were in here a couple weeks ago.â€
“That’s right,†he said with a bit of a cocky attitude like he were on the other side of an inside joke that I didn’t get.
His partner cut straight across the room towards the hot dog roller, and I scooted in my seat to try and keep them both in view as I asked, “Do you guys need some help finding anything?â€
“Nah,†he said through his smile, “I think we got everything we came for now.â€
“Oh?â€
“Yeah.â€
I watched as his friend reached under the hot dog roller and pulled off something that had been stuck underneath. He held it up and announced, “Got it!†before stuffing it into his front pocket. The thing looked metallic, about the size of an old flip phone.
“What was that?†I asked.
“Just something we left last time we were here.†His friend walked right out the front door and went to the truck. “Thanks for your help, Jack. Have a good night.â€
Then he turned to follow his friend outside.
I guess this was a false alarm. Good thing, too, because I was absolutely not prepared. What the hell was I even thinking? A baseball bat? What was that going to do against someone coming in here looking for trouble? My pulse slowly began to settle, but then a thought struck me. Right when the bounty hunter had pushed open the door to leave I screamed out, “Wait!â€
He waited, “Yeah?â€
“How much for one of your guns?â€
He stepped back into the store and let the door close. Then he came back to my counter. “Are you serious?â€
“Yeah. How much for a gun?â€
“Are you asking how much I paid? Or how much for you to get one on your own?â€
“No, I mean, if I wanted to buy a gun off of you right now, how much would you charge me?â€
The bounty hunter took a second to think, then he pulled a small pistol from a holster on his ankle and set it in front of me. “One PS1 four-ten forty-five Colt Single-Shot. That means one round capacity. No safety, no serial number, loaded and ready to go. Three hundred, cash.â€
I pulled out my wallet and thumbed through everything. It was twelve bucks. Next, I opened the register and counted it all up. Still not enough.
“I don’t suppose you can take a check?â€
“No.â€
“I’ve got sixty-four dollars and… a bunch of quarters.â€
The man snatched up his gun and turned to leave.
“Wait! How about your mace?†He stopped and turned to see me waving the cash in his direction. “Come on, dude! Sixty-four bucks for a can of mace? That’s gotta be a good deal, right? Look at yourself, you’re a freakin tank. Obviously, I need it more than you!â€
The guy shook his head and walked away.
I watched as they got into their truck and drove off, wondering if now would be a good time to try and take a deep breath.
The actual scheduled moment had come and went, which meant that my attacker was running tardy. As the minutes passed by and I got further away from the prophesized fight to the death, I began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I’d gotten a free pass. Just this once.
Then the door opened and a big, burly man with a neck tattoo and handlebar moustache walked into the store, and I reached for Ricardo.
But the man ended up grabbing a fountain drink and a can of Skoal before paying for a tank of gas and leaving. Another false alarm.
I tried to relax, but there was only so much of this roller coaster I could take. Who was coming for me? Would I recognize him? Was it going to be one of my old attackers like Spencer or Beaux? Would it be a monster? Or would it be someone or something else altogether? I wished that it would just finally happen so I could get it over with already.
Then I heard it. The sound of a car horn honking outside. I looked out the window to see the old widow Agatha Sistrunk sitting in the driver seat of a baby-blue Jeep Wrangler and waving at me to come out and pump her gas.
Of course.
Of. ****ing. Course.
Oh, really funny, universe! You’re going to make me fight to the death against an old lady?! Real mature!
Well, okay then. I grabbed the baseball bat. Let’s get this over with.


Source.