Jim fought back a retch as he stumbled toward the back of the gas station. The burning sensation in his eyes intensified as the bitch behind him gave him another shot from the pepper spray.
Goddamn it burned.
He’d seen a man get hosed down with one of those by the cops before, and had laughed while watching, thinking the perp was just a baby with a low pain threshold. He never would have imagined just how devastating the effects were.
His lungs were on fire.
His eyes felt like he’d ground a thousand bars of soap into them.
Hell, his lips tingled the way they did after he had a couple of atomic wings down at Frank’s Pizza.
An idea clicked in place as he thought of the pizza joint. He’d chugged a glass of milk after eating the wings to help fight the heat. Dear Lord, he hoped the same thing would work with pepper spray.
Bob screamed from somewhere behind him.
Jim hated that little pipsqueak, but he figured they were both in the same hurt locker just about then. If he’d been able to see, he might have even gone back to see if he could help the smug bastard.
But he had a couple of fat women chasing him around with a bottle of instant pain that he had to deal with first. One of his meaty hands wiped at his eyes as he continued to stagger back down the candy bar aisle. The other waved around, searching the area for something, anything, that he could use against the unlikely attackers.
Candy and beef jerky and little bags of potato chips fell from the shelves as his hand knocked them loose.
Glass shattered behind him.
He heard another spray from the can over his shoulder and braced himself for a fresh wave of nausea. None came.
He hoped he’d put enough distance between him and the women.
Pain bit into his hip as he bumped into a freezer that held ice-cream bars and fudgesicles.
“Where are you going, Jimmy?” one of the women asked, her voice high and taunting. “Is a big boy like you afraid of a couple of little ol’ bitties like us?”
Jim tried to reply, but his lungs didn’t want to cooperate. They felt like he’d inhaled hot coals.
Instead, he stopped, planted his lead foot, and spun around, throwing a backhanded slap as hard as he could. He aimed low, knowing that his height advantage would make the blow go high if he didn’t.
The crack that filled the air and sent a reverberation up his arm was possibly the greatest sound he’d ever heard.
A surprised shout came next, followed by the cacophony of more products falling from the shelves to the floor.
Jim couldn’t see who he’d hit, but he knew it had been a solid shot—solid enough to send one of them into the shelving lining the aisles.
How many of the women were following him? Judging by the screams that continued from the other end of the station, he figured that Bob was dealing with at least two of them. The little shit was out of shape, but he definitely could have handled one of the older women by himself.
Jim decided to keep the offense going. He threw two more punches in wide arcs, hoping his long arms would connect with something else.
His right fist hit the metal shelving.
The skin over his knuckles split.
His left found a jaw.
Jim roared in triumph as he listened to the thud of a body hitting the floor.
He spun around again and continued his drunken trek to the back of the convenience store. The exploratory movements of his waving hand found the glass door on one of the refrigerators lining the rear wall.
With an effort that felt Herculean, Jim pried one of his eyes open, the lid weighted by nearly half a dozen chemical sprays. The burning sensation tripled as he blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision.
A red sheen blurred the contents of the fridge as he yanked the door open. He felt more than saw the cartons, cans, and bottles as his bloody, sweaty hands ran across the shelves.
A row of white at the bottom caught his eye.
Bent down.
Touched a small handle with his fingers.
Yanked a carton free.
Tore the cap off.
Upended it over his face.
The cool, thick liquid was a shower from heaven on his burning flesh. His eyes closed instinctively as the milk ran over his face. He forced both lids open again.
He lost what little vision he had for several seconds as he stood there. The milk went into his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He spit it out in a white mist that coated the ceiling and the wall of glass doors.
When the jug was empty, he dropped it to the floor and ground his fingers against his eyes, working the milk deeper.
The relief was better than he could have hoped for. He still hurt, his pores stinging and hot, but he could think clearly again.
He wiped his face and blinked several times.
His vision cleared for the most part.
Two of the hefty women were sprawled out in the aisle. One was attempting to pull herself up by using the shelves, but her weight was too much and the whole aisle teetered toward her.
The other was flat on her back, eyes open, bloody mouth a ruin of broken teeth and shredded lips. She didn’t move.
Jim had never struck a woman before. Now he’d put down two in a matter of seconds.
His mother would have been ashamed.
Jim didn’t give a damn. His blood boiled at the thought of what they’d done to him.
And why? What had caused them to attack him so suddenly, so ruthlessly?
With the agony of his face subsiding, the throbs in his hands came to prominence. He raised them in front of his face and grimaced. A deep cut ran between the knuckles of his index and middle fingers on his right hand.
Blood pattered on the floor.
Shards of two broken teeth stuck out of the skin covering the knuckles of his left hand.
Without thinking, he grabbed the pieces and yanked them free, tossing them back at the feet of their owner.
Then he saw Melody behind the counter, swinging a bat over her head and then bringing it down again and again. The repeated motion made her look like a lumberjack working at a fallen log with an axe.
The bat came back bloody after the third swing.
Chunks of hair matted the aluminum.
Melody stopped after a dozen swings, her hefty bosom rising and falling as she sucked in big gulps of air. She stared down at what Jim could only assume was Bob’s corpse.
Thankfully, he couldn’t see the body behind the counter.
The last woman stood behind Mel, by the coffee station. She’d watched the murder with a smile of glee.
Jim gaped at all of them.
“Why?” he asked stupidly and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Mel slowly turned her head in his direction. The murderous glare in her eyes made him recoil, a movement he hadn’t even known he was capable of.
For most of his adult life, Jim had intimidated almost everyone he encountered. He didn’t do it intentionally, but the body God had given him often made people wary of his presence. The gruff demeanor he carried only added to the effect. The idea that he would be so easily scared by an upper-middle-aged woman, one who could stand to lose fifty pounds, felt impossible.
But as he stared back at her, he knew that something horrible, beyond a murder with a baseball bat, had just occurred. The women had been changed on a fundamental level.
Melody worked for the sheriff, for Christ’s sake. She took emergency calls and chatted with the lonely elderly people of the area.
She didn’t beat gas jockeys to death for the fun of it.
Or she hadn’t before today, at least.
Jim kept his shoulders squared to the women at the other end of the aisles as he sidestepped to his left. The door was only twenty feet away. If he could get outside, he would jump in his truck and haul ass out of there.
The exit was closer to the women than to him however, and he wasn’t entirely sure he could make it there first. It had been a lot of years since he’d run at an all-out sprint.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Melody asked. She raised the bat and let it rest on her shoulder. Blood and hair stuck to her blouse.
She didn’t seem to mind.
“Stay back, goddamn it.” Jim took another step. “I don’t want to hurt you, but—”
“We don’t need to worry about that.” Melody gave him a grin that would have put a Cheshire cat to shame. “How about we show the football star a little thing or two about baseball, hmm? What do you say?”
Mel maneuvered around the counter and angled toward the door with a swiftness that surprised Jim. She wouldn’t be making an NFL team as a running back anytime soon, but she still got around in a hurry for her age and bulk.
Jim paused, fifteen feet from the door.
Melody stopped too.
Jim asked, “Why are you doing this?”
The other woman came up behind Melody. She threw her head back and laughed at the ceiling.
No, Jim thought. That’s not a laugh—it’s a cackle.
The fat woman he’d slapped in the aisle had finally extricated herself from the fallen candy bars and potato chip bags. Her right cheek had an angry, red welt running from her ear to the corner of her mouth. Blood trickled from one nostril.
She stayed where she was, her head low, eyes up. She watched Jim like a predator waiting for its prey to make a move.
“Why?” Melody asked. “Because you didn’t hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“The call. The signal. Our rebirth.”
“What call?” Jim wanted to keep them talking, hoping he could slink closer to the door. He paused again when Melody took another step forward. His eyes darted around as he looked for something he could throw at her.
He saw Bob’s cell phone resting on the counter and what she said finally clicked home.
Whatever they’d all heard on that call had changed them.
Only Bob and Jim hadn’t answered a phone.
And they were the only ones who hadn’t been turned into psychos.
He remembered then that the men out by the pumps had also listened to the call. Did he dare turn to look through the front windows? Could he chance taking his eyes away from Melody?
Even a big, strong son of a bitch like Jim couldn’t take a shot from that baseball bat to the noggin without going down for the count.
Melody made the decision for him. She let out a battle cry that would have been hilarious coming from a woman of her age and physical disposition, if not for the bloody weapon in her hands and the madness in her eyes.
She raised the bat over her head and charged at him.
It had been decades since Jim’s glory days on the gridiron, but his football instincts were still strong. Rather than make a break for the door, he barreled forward, bending over at the waist.
Chest out, head up, lead with the shoulder.
Just as his coach had taught him all those years ago.
Jim folded Mel over at the waist as he speared her.
Her feet lifted from the ground, a woof exploding from her lips.
The bat clattered to the floor.
Jim kept his feet pumping, driving them into the counter.
Mel’s back hit the wood with a sickening crack. She cried out as her body went limp in his arms. He released her and stepped back.
She slid down the counter to a seated position on the floor, her face contorted in misery.
Guilt flashed over Jim as he stared down at her. He’d just attacked, and seriously wounded, a woman who was known for her kindness and patience. Of course, she’d been crazed.
Had just killed.
But now, as he watched her slither along the floor, her hands exploring the damage to her spine, Jim feared that he might have a jail sentence in his future.
He knew that he’d defended himself, but would a jury buy that? Would his peers believe that a man of his size and stature had been scared to death of a much smaller and older woman?
His panic was sliced away in a flash as pain cut into his arm. Jim hissed and yanked his right arm tight to his body. Blood oozed from a long cut just above his elbow.
The woman who had been behind Mel now stood beside him, a jagged shard from a broken coffee pot held in one of her hands. “You like that?”
“Bitch!” Jim reacted without thinking, his wounded arm lashing out.
He punched her just above the belly button with his lacerated knuckles. The air whooshed from her lungs as she bent over.
The makeshift blade fell from her hands, shattering on the floor beside Melody.
Jim grabbed the back of the woman’s shirt and yanked her forward. Her wide, pale back was exposed as the clothing ripped.
He slammed her headfirst into the counter.
She collapsed on top of Melody, groans escaping both of them.
The bell above the door behind Jim dinged.
He wheeled around, saw the final woman fleeing from the convenience store. She waddled across the pavement, heading toward the gas pumps.
The two men who had been filling their vehicles stood a dozen feet in front of the door, staring in at Jim.
Each held a nozzle in their hands, the gas lines hanging behind them, attached to the pumps. Fuel poured onto the concrete.
That was when Jim noticed the unmistakable stink of gasoline.
The entire placed reeked of it.
A puddle pooled under the door, seeping across the bloody laminate.
Both of the men dropped the gas nozzles to the ground and ran past the pumps, joining the woman. One of them stopped at the rear of his pickup and reached into the bed.
Jim’s mouth fell open when he saw the man pull a flare from the truck.
“Holy shit!” He spun on his heel and started for the rear of the store.
Melody reached out and looped an arm around his ankle.
He stumbled forward, dragging her away from the counter.
She grinned up at him. “Where are you going?”
Jim regained his balance and cocked his fist back, ready to land one final bow.
And then he saw the man outside strike the flare and throw it at the pool of gasoline.
Jim didn’t hear the explosion as a wave of hot air and flame consumed him.