Chapter Thirty
“There really wasn’t anything I could have done differently,” I explained.
Tom stood on the other side of the counter, that same sad look in his eyes. He wasn’t answering me back, he just let me ramble on and on. About how I’d done my best and lost. About how I’d failed. About my fears of what was next. What the radio meant about those of us who were replaced. About where O’Brien went, or why she refused to answer my calls now. About how my best friend died because I was too sloppy, stupid, and lazy to prepare for war when I was supposed to.
I must have talked to him for hours. Tom always was a really good listener.
But I didn’t need a good listener right now. I needed guidance. I needed help. I needed saving. “Well?” I asked. “Where’s your fatherly advice? Aren’t you going to offer me some kind of cryptic solution? Where’s your justification for even being here this time?!” I realized I was shouting. I also realized that I didn’t care.
Tom stretched and took a breath. He took all the time he needed. And when he finally spoke, it was with the voice of a man who couldn’t hide his pity.
“I’m so sorry, Jack.”
“Is that it? That’s not helpful in any way.”
“I ain’t here this time to be helpful. I told you already, you have to figure this one out on your own.”
“Why?! Why me?!”
“There comes a point in every man’s life when he sees the world for what it really is: cruel and uncaring. That’s what defines what kind of man you’re going to be. How do you react in the face of such darkness and hopelessness? Do you keep on fighting, knowing that we’ll all be dust one day? Or do you give up and call it someone else’s problem? I have faith you’ll make the right decision. But like I said, I’m not here to help you.”
“Then why are you here, Tom? Please tell me!”
The front door opened. I turned to see the most nauseatingly beautiful person I had ever seen in my life. She floated into the room, walked up to me, looked me in the eyes, and said nothing.
“Oh,” I said. “It’s you again.”
The fox lady turned her head to Tom and held out her hand. I could hear the words before she said them.
“Will you come with me?”
Tom took her hand, and together they walked out the door. I never saw either of them again.
***
It didn’t take long for the gas station to turn into a ghost town (not that it had that far to fall). I couldn’t stay on top of the upkeep by myself, and I couldn’t afford to pay somebody to mow the grass or fill the rapidly expanding potholes in the parking lot. We should have been up to date on trash removal payments, but apparently Howard called in a favor or bribed somebody, because the weekly dumpster pickups came to an end without even considering their I.O.U. options.
Pretty soon, even the raccoons were giving me the pity eyes every time they saw me dragging bags of trash into a burn pile behind the dumpster, as if to say “Man. You’ve really let this place go, haven’t you?”
There wasn’t much I could do in the way of strategic planning when all of my efforts were focused on treading water. When the day arrived that a potential ally came into the store, it was all I could do to keep from breaking down and crying tears of joy.
“Hey, is this shit-hill still open, or what?”
I was in the supply closet when I heard his voice, searching for anything worth pawning. Times were tough, and people weren’t exactly knocking each other over to get inside and spend money, so if this were a potential customer, I’d need to charm the pants off of him and upsell like our lives depended on it.
But when I raced out of the room, already in salesman mode, I could see that the man standing next to the counter was not a potential customer.
“Oh shit, thank you, God.”
The man gave me his usual glare and scowl combo, then said, “That was not the reaction I was expecting.”
I laughed a little too hard, probably coming across as a complete maniac in the process. But I couldn’t help it. Hope was here, and it had come in the form of a giant, tan-skinned man with a thick black beard. The man who, I was certain, had access to enough firepower to start (and probably end) a war. A man who they didn’t know anything about. A man who had already taken on both Spencer Middleton and a dark god within a twenty-four-hour span.
I ran up to Benjamin and, without thinking, gave him a hug. He was such a big guy that my ear hit his chest and my arms didn’t even fit all the way around him. Admittedly, this was not the smartest thing for me to do. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground.
He spat the words down at me, “What the hell, Jack?”
“Sorry! My bad.” I picked myself up and tried to temper my excitement. “I was just so happy to see you! Things have gotten bad around here. So, so bad! I’ve been forced to do terrible things. And the monsters, holy cow! The monsters! I should be dead, but now you’re here and everything’s gonna be okay again, right? You’re just gonna blip bloop and do whatever you do and kill them all and then things will go back to normal, right?”
He took a second to study me, then a minute to study the gas station. Finally, he asked, “What have I missed?”
“It’s such a long story.”
“Hey, Jack!”
“Well, why don’t we start at the beginning then?”
“Jack! Hey! Psst! Over here!”
“Okay, let me start a pot of coffee real quick.”
“Hellooo? Are you seriously going to ignore me like that?”
“Good. Something tells me we’re gonna need it. Is there anyone else besides you and me inside the building right now?”
“Casper Van Monster-Trucking Dien!”
“No. Just us.”
“Make your coffee. I’m going to check the perimeter. I’ll be right back, and we can get started.”
He watched as I measured out the grounds for a new pot of coffee, then he pulled a gun out of a holster by his boot and checked the magazine. Satisfied with what he saw, he clicked it back into place, chambered a round, went out the front door, and hooked left. As soon as he was far enough away to not see me, I ran straight back to my spot behind the counter, bent down, and pulled the ice chest out from where I had hidden it all those days ago. After the loneliness finally broke me. After I freaked out and went back to that spot in the woods. After I dug up the head I had buried.
I braced myself for the smell, then pulled the lid off so I could look him in the eye sockets, immediately wishing I had not.
“What the hell do you want?” I asked him.
The bloated, severed head of Jerry smiled (if you can call that smiling). The state of decomposition made it difficult to say. One night underground does a lot more damage than I expected. “Look, bro, thanks for keeping me around. I promise I’m not trying to be an asshole or anything.” As he spoke, his jaw went up and down, and what was left of his tongue wiggled around in his mouth, sloshing in the melted ice water that had almost completely submerged him.
“What is it, then?”
“I just wanted to warn you. That isn’t Benjamin.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said. That’s not really Benjamin. I don’t know how I know, but trust me. I can tell. One hundred percent. That’s not the real guy. Hell, that’s not even a human. It’s a mimic, and it’s here for you. You’re going to have to kill him.”
“Prove it.”
“Dude, I can’t prove it. But you gotta trust me. I swear! He’s going to pretend to care, to get you talking and see how much you already know. Then he’s going to find out who you’ve talked to and how much they know. Then, he’s going to kill you and everyone that suspects anything.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“You can start by getting him away from his guns.”
“I don’t even know how many guns he has!”
I heard the door open, and quickly put the lid back onto the Styrofoam ice chest before sliding it onto the shelf below the register.
“Jack,” boomed Benjamin’s voice, “Where the hell did you go?”
I stood up slowly, “Hey, sorry, I was tying my shoelaces.”
“Behind the counter?”
“My leg got cut off.”
He stared at me and, for a second, looked like he was going to question it, but then he shook his head and asked, “Coffee ready?”
“He’s going to kill you to death. Don’t let him. Stay alive long enough to kill him first. Also, we should buy some scented candles. It’s dark and smells like decayed head in here.”
I walked to the coffee station as he turned the deadbolt, trapping us inside together. I poured out two cups of strong coffee and carried them over to the booth seats under the window. I sat first. He took one last look around, then sat across from me, keeping the gun firmly gripped in his right hand the entire time.
I thought fast, and took a sip from the cup in my right hand, thus claiming it under the ancient rule of “my germs.” Then, I extended the cup in my left hand straight across the table. He would have to put his gun down to take the coffee from me, and that’s where he left it, on the table, right between the two of us, as he sipped his drink and eyed me.
“Alright then, Jack—”
“He only has two guns on him.”
“—Let’s get this started—”
“The other is behind him in a small-of-back holster.”
“—Tell me everything you know—”
“He can’t get to it.”
“—From the beginning.”
“Do it! Do it now! Grab the gun!”
I closed my eyes, put both hands on the table, and shushed the voice in my head. Unfortunately, I’d gotten way too used to being all alone and didn’t realize until after that my shushing was out loud. When I reopened my eyes, Benjamin was scowling again.
“Something I said?” he asked.
“No,” I responded. “I just had to sneeze. Don’t worry about it. Where should we start? Oh right, the monsters!”
He took another sip of coffee as I started from the beginning and told him almost everything. I left out the part where I found out that Jerry’s head was somehow not as dead as it should have been. And I left out the part where I went back into the woods the night after I buried him, dug the box back up, took him to the gas station, and transferred him into a small Styrofoam ice chest. I definitely didn’t tell him how I’d been keeping him on ice and talking to him off and on ever since.
When I started my story, the sun was up. When I finished my story, the sun was gone. Benjamin grunted. “That’s it? What happened next?”
I waved at our surroundings. “You’re looking at it. This happened next.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re telling me!”
“What about the other girl? Rosa? She never called the cops or followed up or anything?”
“Who was she going to call? I killed somebody right in front of a deputy sheriff. No, she’s not going to tell anyone anything.”
“And the lady cop? Did she believe you when you told her what was happening?”
“DUDE. He’s asking about witnesses!”
“O’Brien? No. She’s convinced that I’m crazy. Neither of them have any reason to suspect a thing.”
“It’s only you, then? You’re the only person left who knows about the mimics?”
Something clicked when he said that. A weird little piece of familiarity that registered almost too subtly to notice, but when it did, I realized how fucked I was. That word he used. “Mimics.” I’d intentionally never used it before now because I thought it sounded too silly. Mimics are characters from video games or Dungeons and Dragons, and this was real life. Sure, the word “monster” wasn’t a whole lot better, but that specific word, “mimic,” was not mine. I’d heard it before, though. Recently, and repeatedly. That was the word Jerry’s head kept using to describe those things.
He put down the rest of his coffee in one big gulp, then set the empty cup right next to his gun.
“Dude!” Jerry’s head was positively screaming at me now. “It’s now or never. He’s going to kill you and then who’s going to take care of me?!”
“Actually,” I said, “there is one more person who knows everything.”
He glared even harder. “What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. But I do know how we can get in touch with him.”
“Alright. How?”
“Sit tight. I just need to go find my journal.”
I stood, and he matched my movement.
“I’ll go too. In case what you say is real, I’m not letting you out of my sight for a second. Can’t take the chance one of those things replaces you when I’m not looking.”
He grabbed his gun and followed closely all the way to the counter. I’ve never been the best liar, but he’d have to be blind to not see that I was behaving suspiciously. I needed to think up something smart and fast, but usually my thoughts are only one of those at best, so I leaned into the second option.
I turned, looked him in the eyes, and said, “Hey, buddy, you know what we need right now?”
He gave me the requisite glare before answering, “What?”
“Some more coffee. Would you mind fixing us some fresh cups while I grab my journal?”
With some hesitation, he turned and moved towards the coffee station.
I already accepted the fact that I was crazy a long time ago, and I certainly wasn’t about to let that fact escape me here and now. There was a significant, unignorable chance that Jerry’s severed head was exactly as dead as it should have been, and that monsters are not real, and that everything that has happened up to this point was, to some degree, a fabrication of my own making.
Even after all I’ve seen, it’s comforting to think that maybe I’m wrong. After all, the alternative was pretty insane, and it would have been irresponsible for me to simply assume that Jerry’s head was telling the truth. I needed proof before I could act, so as soon as Benjamin had his back to me, I tested out the accuracy of Jerry’s assertions.
Thankfully, the words poured out without my having to think about them first.
“Hey, nice ass. Have you been working out?”
He made a noise that sounded like, “Huh?” and I smacked the top of his rear with a wide-open palm. His automatic reflexes were faster than my brain could process. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground again, with Benjamin standing over me and screaming.
“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”
“So many things,” I answered.
“Get up. I’m gonna pretend that didn’t happen, but if you touch me one more time, I’ll rip off the rest of your limbs and feed ‘em to you. Got it?” He didn’t wait for my answer. He just knelt down, grabbed me by the shirt collar, and yanked me to my feet. “Now go get the damn journal!”
As he went on to the coffee station, I raced behind the counter, crouched down, and started looking for weapons. That ass smack was a gamble, but it might have paid off. Now, at least, I knew. Jerry was right. Benjamin had another gun, tucked into a holster in the small of his back. Now I needed something to defend myself in case the rest of Jerry’s warnings were true. My eyes landed on the ice chest.
“Dude! Let me out of the box and throw me at him! I’ll bite his fucking face off!”
But I ignored it. There was nothing down here that could take out even an unarmed mountain of a man like Benjamin, and I wasn’t about to bring a severed head to a gunfight. There was only one option left.
I had to get one of those guns away from him.
I grabbed the journal from the space on the shelf above Jerry, then took it back to the booth seat. Benjamin was right behind me, drink in one hand and gun in the other. He placed the tall cup of steaming black coffee in front of me, but didn’t sit right away.
“That it? Your friend, the information about how to find him, it’s in there?”
“Not exactly,” I responded, trying to buy some time. “It’s in a code. I need to decipher it first.”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Benjamin slammed into the seat across from me.
“Sorry, are you in some kind of hurry?” I asked.
“No. We got all the time in the world. Now get to cracking.”
“I will, but first, I wanted to ask you a couple questions.”
“Me?” he said with a loud laugh. “Why the hell should I tell you anything?”
“It would make me feel a lot better.”
His laughing face went right back into a grimace. “Alright. Shoot.”
“The day you first met me, do you remember anything about it?”
“Yeah, you were staring at the clock when I came in. You thought it was morning time, but it was the beginning of the night.”
“The first time you met my coworker, Jerry.”
“Was that the sack of corn guy, or the one who took my piece and tried to off himself in front of us?”
“Where’d you get the C4?”
“An associate made a supply drop on my third day of the hunt. I never met him, I just got the coordinates and picked up the gear.”
“Are you a Dale, or a Brennan?”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Boxers or briefs?”
“Depends on the combat scenario.”
“Where’s your car parked? I don’t see it outside.”
“I walked here from town. Didn’t want a repeat of last time. Vehicles like mine are hard to replace.”
“That does make sense.”
“Did I pass your little test?”
I relaxed, then let out a short laugh. “Sorry. I don’t have to tell you why I can never be too careful. If you want to know who else knows about this, you just need to look at the journal like this.” I opened the book to my tic tac toe page and leaned forward to show him. He leaned forward, too, just like I expected.
But then my journal “accidently” hit the cup of hot coffee and knocked it over, spilling it out all over the table and onto his lap.
I jumped out of my seat. Benjamin did the same, leaving behind his handgun. I dove for it, snatched it, then straightened up and pointed the weapon right at him.
He laughed.
“Easy there, killer. You know that’s a deadly weapon, right?”
“Don’t move, Benjamin! I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Well ain’t that convenient, considering you still got the safety on?”
“Don’t screw with me, dude. I know how to use this thing.”
“Yeah? Why don’t you prove it then?”
He took a big step forward. I made a quick decision and reached for the safety button with my left hand, keeping my eyes on the huge man. I knew it was a button thing on the side by the trigger. My thumb found it right away, and I pressed…
...and the magazine fell onto the floor with a loud clack.
Benjamin laughed again. Actually, it was more like a villainous cackle. Then he pulled the gun from behind his back in a single smooth motion, saying, “Alright there, hot shot. I’ll give you one chance. Put the gun down now and all will be forgiven.”
The idea crossed my mind, that maybe I could drop to the ground, grab the bullet clip, load it back into the gun, and shoot him before he had enough time to shoot me first or—more likely—crush me under his giant feet. But I didn’t love my odds.
I started to lower the gun, and in the process must have accidentally tightened my grip. That’s when I learned two things: First, some weapons have what is known as a “hair trigger,” where even the slightest pressure can result in a pin firing. Second, Benjamin had already cocked the hammer and loaded a round into the chamber some time before I managed to steal the weapon. With the amount of disregard he showed for gun safety, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he was bluffing about the safety being on. And yet, it surprised the hell out of me when the gun exploded in my hand.
“Fuck!” I yelled as the weapon fell and hit the floor.
“Fuck!” Benjamin yelled as a spray of blood erupted out of the wound right below his collarbone.
“Fuck!” yelled Jerry from inside my head. “That was fucking awesome! Now fucking run!”
Benjamin’s right arm hung at his side and wobbled like he was trying to get it to move. The bullet must have hit some kind of important muscle group, because try as he did, he couldn’t manage to lift the weapon. His left hand was pressed against the spring of blood flowing down his torso, but once he realized his right arm was effectively useless, he made an instant decision to release pressure on the wound and grab the gun with his left hand.
I sprinted into the closest aisle. There was no time to go around the shelves, and I was never acrobatic enough to jump over them, so I plowed into the metal racks of ramen and potted meats hard enough for the entire section to give way and fall over.
Benjamin fired.
The bullet went over my head, and I pulled myself up and started crouch-running down the aisle. A single row of groceries separated us. He was blind-firing with his off-hand straight through the shelves, and some of the bullets were coming too close for comfort. Especially the one that grazed by near enough to leave two bullet holes in the slack of my favorite hoodie.
I wasn’t counting shots, but even if I were, it’s not like I knew how many bullets his gun could hold. All I knew was that I needed to keep moving. I emerged from the end of the aisle and tried to go for the front door, but as soon as I turned, he was already there. I couldn’t believe it. How fast he’d moved. It was absolutely impossible.
He smiled, lifted the gun, and pulled the trigger three times.
Click, click, click.
He had already blown his load. My temporary relief was short-lived, though. Before I had a chance to celebrate not being dead, I realized that something was coming from the bullet wound on his collarbone. Something long, black, and wriggling. It split into two pieces. The bifurcated tendrils began to spin and break into smaller pieces, writhing, crawling, stitching Benjamin’s skin back together.
“TOLD YA SO!”
I turned and sprinted (or at least, my version of “sprinted”) towards the front counter, and dove headfirst over. Upon my not-so-majestic landing, Jerry was already screaming instructions to me. “Behind you! Under the smokes case! The bat! Get the bat! Mimics hate bats! That’s a bat fact!”
I was done questioning anything he had to say. On my hands and knees, I crawled over to the cigarette case, reached under, and found the baseball bat that Howard’s goon left behind.
“JACK” growled Benjamin as he stalked ever closer, “Come out and face me! I promise I’ll make this quick.” I gripped the weapon with both hands, took a breath, then rose to meet him. “Now I’m sure you’re probably wondering—”
THWONK!
I cracked him across the face with everything I had. The impact felt like it should have been enough to decapitate, but he didn’t even go down. He just turned his broken face back to meet me, spat a few teeth onto the counter, and smiled to show off the black worms wiggling out of the wounds in his gums while a line of blood and drool spilled out of his mouth.
I pulled back and swung again, but he was ready this time. The bat landed square in the middle of the outstretched palm of his right hand. Apparently, his slugs worked faster than old Aggie’s, because his range of motion was already back to normal. He yanked the bat out of my hands, and I shoved the entire cash register off the counter onto the floor at his feet.
He jumped back, and I lunged forward, over the counter. My attack had failed, and the only thing left for me to do was run. I aimed for the back door and booked it as fast as my body would allow.
“Where ya goin’, Jack?!” Benjamin roared. I assumed he was being rhetorical, so I didn’t bother answering. I just grabbed the door, yanked it open, and fled into the night.