Chapter Thirty-Three
That night, as I sat behind the counter, I found myself wondering how much more of this I could take. The thought arrived out of nowhere, with no real catalyst to speak of. Just an empty, quiet gas station, and me in my seat with the baseball bat by my side, waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Little did I know, I was moments away from having a brilliant idea, one that would change the shape of the battlescape, ever so slightly, in my favor.
I picked up the bloody bat and stared at it. For no real reason, I felt compelled to scratch a smiley face into the dried blood. (This was not the brilliant idea. Just an impulsive decision that made me laugh.) The bat looked just like Wilson the volleyball. Only not quite a Wilson.
“Hey Jerry?”
“Yeah man?”
“What’s a good name for a baseball bat?”
“I think Lucille is a popular choice.”
“No, no, this one isn’t a Lucille. This one isn’t putting off Lucille vibes at all.” I leaned forward, brought myself face to face with the bat, and waited until it spoke to me. Soon, I knew. I held the bat in the air and announced, “I christen thee ‘Ricardo’!” (This was also not the brilliant idea, but trust me; I’m getting there.)
I gave Ricardo a good wave around, then explained to him that he was going to have to start pulling double duty. I couldn’t do everything on my own, and Jerry was still just a decomposed skull in a Styrofoam ice chest. If I needed to step away for a moment, I explained, Ricardo was going to have to man the register.
He didn’t put up any fuss. Ricardo was already turning out to be a great new employee.
I snapped back to reality fast enough to get mental whiplash. What am I doing? I need to focus and quit playing around. I was still in the middle of a war, poorly trained and even more poorly armed. The enemy had everything on me. Numbers, time, resources, the ability to rest and recharge. The only thing they didn’t have was the home-field advantage, but my meager advantages meant nothing if I couldn’t force myself to stay focused.
Attention, however, is a fickle mistress, and as soon as the mouse scurried out from beneath the frozen drink machine, I instantly forgot all about the army of mimics and concentrated solely on the newest problem at hand.
He was a small rodent, a couple ounces at best. I kept one eye on him as I snuck up, stopping briefly at the drink machine to grab a Styrofoam cup to scoop him into. I briefly thought about reaching for a box of those extreme-duty mouse traps, but decided they weren’t worth the risk. (The warnings on the package were written in Korean, but the accompanying illustrations drove the point home clearly enough: improper usage could result in loss of fingers, and I definitely didn’t need any more of that happening.)
Besides, he didn’t look like he was causing any trouble. Granted, he had jumped up onto one of the grocery shelves, and he was chewing through a bag of trail mix, but he didn’t do anything wrong. He just wanted to mind his own business, steal some crumbs, and hang out inside where it was warm and safe. How could I judge him for that?
The moment he noticed me sneaking towards him, he spun around to face me. I froze while he gave a look that seemed to say, “Where you going with that cup, Jack?”
I tried to communicate to the mouse that nothing was improper and he could go right back to his own business. I smiled, pointed at the cup, flipped it over and placed it on top of my head, then held out my open hands to show him that it was just a fancy new hat and nothing for him to worry about. But the mouse wasn’t buying it. He jumped down from the shelf and made a mad dash towards the other side of the store. I snatched the cup hat and gave chase, yelling, “Ricardo! Stop him!”
Before the mouse could disappear into a crack in the wall by the coffee machine, he flipped over and fully reversed course like he’d bounced off an invisible wall. It was so abrupt that I nearly stepped on him. I didn’t have the time to wonder what caused this strange reversal, because as soon as I realized the mouse had reversed course, I saw what else was chasing him.
The mouse dove between my legs. Behind him, a black snake emerged from a hole in the wall. It was smaller than most of the snakes I’d seen in there. Thicker than a pencil, thinner than a finger, just shy of a foot in length. Eyes and skin and darting tongue were all solid black, and it was pursuing the mouse with singular purpose, running right after him, following the same path between my legs, skittering silently on its six shiny black legs.
It took me a second to realize what was wrong with this situation. When reality clicked, I dropped the cup onto the ground and screamed, “Spider snake!”
On some level, I knew that the six-legged snake creature was not a spider. I knew arachnids have eight legs. Logically and rationally, I got that. But whatever subconscious vestige of my caveman brain that evolved to automatically detect and react to certain threats was blowing up in that moment, calling to me with the collective screams of my ancestors, “RUN! DO NOT TOUCH! DO NOT ENGAGE! SPIDER SNAKE BAD!” And so, I decided that for my own purposes, I would call that thing skittering around inside the store a “spider snake.”
I’m sure some of you are thinking to yourselves, “A snake with legs? Isn’t that just a lizard?” Simply put, no. The legs on this animal were long and skinny like angel hair, bent in two places to keep it low to the ground. And it was fast. But the mouse’s reaction to it was every bit as primal and focused as my own.
The rodent parkoured under and over tables and displays, with the abomination close behind him every step of the way. I wasn’t able to keep up; it was all I could do to keep them both within my line of sight, ignoring the red-hot urge to simply leave and burn the gas station to the ground and start over only after the entire place was a smoldering crater.
When the mouse finally made a last-ditch effort to double back and climb me for safety, I didn’t even consider stopping him. I was solidly Team Mammal in this fight, and if he wanted my protection, then he must have been truly desperate. I braced for what was next to come.
By the time the mouse reached the top of my head, the spider snake had already begun climbing, focused only on its target and completely apathetic to my presence.
Without thinking, I plucked the spider snake from my shirt and held him out in front of me. (This was not the brilliant idea. This wasn’t even a good idea.) It angled its head, looked at me with its six solid black eyes, and flicked its forked tongue in my direction. The body felt prickly and cold, like a fresh piece of okra. I wanted to drop it, but I had my fingers wrapped around the base of its neck, and I feared letting go would give it the mobility necessary to bite me. Assuming, of course, this thing even had teeth.
It went on the offensive, feverishly scraping at my hand with each of its sharp feet, coiling its body around my wrist, then hissing wildly and baring a pair of needle-fangs. (Yep. It has teeth!) The mouse must have seen enough, because it chose this moment to dive off my head with a shrill squeak that probably meant “Fuck this, I’m out” in mouse. I instinctively karate chopped the air, flinging the monstrosity to the other side of the room. As soon as it landed, it bounced back in my direction. This time, when it reached me, it took a different route, slipping inside my pants leg. Its pointy feet digging into my skin with each step as it climbed upward.
Without thinking, I unzipped and dropped my pants, just in time for the spider snake to come darting over my underwear. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground with my eyes shut, repeating the mantra “Stop, drop, and roll” as I turned over and over, putting out an invisible fire. When I opened my eyes again, the snake was gone.
As soon as I got back to standing, the door opened behind me. I spun around to see Old Bob Hoover standing there, staring.
“What?!” I yelled.
“I, um,” he stammered, “came to get my peanuts?”
“Not now, Old Bob! I’m busy!”
I found my pants where I left them, checked for spider snakes before I put them back on, then jumped over the counter to grab the baseball bat. When I looked back, Old Bob was still hovering in the doorway. I screamed, “Close the door! You’re going to let it out!”
He stepped inside and waited for the door to close behind him before asking, “Do you still have cracklins? I was going—”
“Jesus, Old Bob! Can’t you see I’m working on something?! Come back later!”
He looked at the bloodied baseball bat in my hands, then offered these parting words: “This is exactly why no one shops here anymore.”
With Old Bob out of the way and my prior hesitations completely evaporated, I went ahead and grabbed those Korean overkill mouse traps. I spread them out around the store, baiting them with chunks of our most pungent chorizo sausage. After about ten minutes had passed, I found myself sitting behind the cash register where the whole thing had started, wondering if maybe, just maybe, this was all in my head and there was no spider snake and I’d simply imagined it all. But then the fucker fell from the fucking ceiling and landed on the fucking counter in front of me.
It hissed and I screamed and it jumped at me and I swung the bat. Luck was on my side. The bat connected and sent the spider snake flying across the room. It hit the glass of the cold drink case with a thunk and fell to the ground. As soon as it saw me coming to finish the job, it skittered away in the direction of the drink machine.
That was its last mistake.
I caught up with the spider snake where it had fallen victim to one of the gas station's dumbest unnatural hazards—the tar pit. As I watched the thing struggle to free itself, only to fall deeper into the sticky crater of drink machine syrup and cold case runoff, I almost felt sorry for it. But only almost. It looked at me and flicked its tongue, like it was trying to tell me something. It could have been a “Help me” or a “Fuck you,” but my response to either message would have been the same. There was no point in letting it suffer.
I held Ricardo above my head, told the spider snake I was sorry, and brought it down with enough force to insta-kill, splattering me and the surrounding walls with a green and red mix of blood, guts, and syrupy residue.
It was dead, but I wasn’t about to take any more chances, so I swung again and again until the entire thing was a flattened, two-dimensional Rorschach test where there was once a living entity. My work done, I allowed myself a tiny moment to revel in the savage victory before I heard the sound of a loud snap somewhere close by, and instantly returned to hunt mode, tiptoeing around the grocery aisle with the bat ready to strike. When I came upon it, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was just one of the traps.
The mouse must have mistaken my distraction as an opportunity to steal a piece of sausage. The trap had done its job (a little too effectively), and now the poor rodent was snapped in twain. But at least he didn’t die for nothing. I reset the trap using the top half of the mouse as bait.
That’s when the brilliant idea hit me…
Traps. Of course!
That’s what I’ve been missing this whole time!
I needed to set some mimic traps.
***
I could hear the man screaming from outside long before he reached the front door. “Hellooo?! Is anyone there?!”
I grabbed Ricardo and put the weapon in the ready position. There were four guns within reach in case Ricardo wasn’t up to the task. (At this point, no matter where I stood in the gas station, there were almost always four guns within reach.)
The young man opened the door and staggered inside. When he saw me, he cried, “Thank God you’re here! I thought from the outside that this place was closed.” He took a second to examine the destruction around him, then asked, “Is this place closed?”
“That depends,” I answered, noticing how this teenager wasn’t even wearing any socks or shoes. “Do you have any money?”
“What? No! I… You remember me, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “Should I?”
I was just in here a few days ago. But things looked a lot different then. You remember! I was with my friends. We came in a camper van! We were going on a trip to Landon’s uncle’s cabin! You remember, don’t you?”
It slowly came back to me. A few days ago? No, that was months and months ago. But somehow, he was still wearing the same clothes. They were, of course, covered in bloodstains now, but that was to be expected. “Oh yeah. Which one were you again? The jock, the artistic guy, or the stoner?”
He smiled and nodded excitedly. “Yeah! That was us! I’m the stoner! Liam! I brought the Ouija board! You do remember!”
“I remember warning you not to go to that cabin. And I distinctly remember telling you not to come waltzing back in here looking for free phone calls.”
“I’m… I’m so sorry, but they’re dead! They’re all dead! I need your help, man. Please?”
I tapped Jerry’s box. A second later, his voice responded, “Yeah, what’s up?”
I whispered beneath the counter, “Tell me this is another mimic.”
“Oh, that guy? Sorry, dude. That guy is the real deal.”
“Are you sure? Are you absolutely positive?”
“Yep. He’s not a monster, just a stupid teenager.”
Liam fell to his knees, crying, “Please, you gotta help me! It was horrible! It was so, so horrible!”
I saw the opportunity. “Well, you’re in luck.”
“I am?”
“It just so happens I need a favor. You agree to stay here and watch the gas station for me, and you can use the phone all you want until I get back. Do we have a deal?”
He wiped his tears and snot off on his sleeve. “Yeah! Yeah, of course!”
I grabbed my backpack and started stuffing it with guns until it was nearly too full to zip shut. Then I grabbed the ice chest and made my way around the counter, shouting over my shoulder, “Ricardo! You’re in charge until I get back. Make sure Liam doesn’t do anything stupid.”
Liam looked at the baseball bat propped up in my seat behind the counter. The sole survivor seemed to be having second thoughts. “What… Where are you going?”
“Gotta go prepare for war. It should take a few hours.”
“And, uh, what’s in that box?”
“It’s the decaying severed head of my best friend. I need him for his monster-detecting abilities. I’ll see you tonight. Try not to die.”
With that, I left the gas station property for the first time in ages. The sun was hotter and brighter than I remembered. That would be sure to come in handy. I had a long way to go on foot, and the woods are always so much scarier in the dark.