Chapter Thirty-Five
I’d just finished burying the most recent Benjamin. This one was a real squirter, and I ended up with blood in my eyes again. He went down easier than some of the others. He went down harder than some of the others. I guess you could say this one was about average. They didn’t come every day, but they came often enough that I’d gotten very good at the routine. Kill. Burn. Bury. Rinse. Repeat.
The only real problem was how the back of the gas station was like the only litter box at the cat sanctuary. There just weren’t any more places to bury anything else. Half the time I start digging, I find another skeleton I’d forgotten about. It was getting ridiculous. But as long as the bodies kept coming, I had no choice but to keep burying them.
It wasn’t all about the Benjamimics. Sometimes, they were just random people. Sometimes, they were locals. Even one guy pretending to be a “health inspector.” Not always adults, either. It was the kids that were the hardest to kill (figuratively speaking, of course—in practice, they were the easiest). But any time the head in the box told me I was dealing with a monster, I dealt with the monster.
Now you’re probably wondering what happens to all the vehicles, right? Well, that’s a great question. And I have no idea. One time, I caught a glimpse of a group of men in red and yellow robes emerging from the forest and driving away in a minivan. Whoever they were, I thought of them the same way I think of vultures. They’re doing a necessary service, cleaning up messes, and as long as they stayed on that side of the gas station door, they weren’t my problem.
I had a system. It was good. And then, I received a special visitor at the gas station.
One whose presence was, let’s face it, long overdue.
I didn’t see or hear him come through the front door. He simply appeared on the other side of my counter. First red flag. He wore dark sunglasses inside at night. Second red flag. He had a pair of snakeskin gloves and a black leather jacket covered in rhinestones. His hair was black as night and down to his shoulders. A short goatee on his face. And every time he spoke, the lights in the room flickered. Third red flag.
“Hello, Jack.”
“Hi.”
“I’m impressed you made it this far. After everything they threw at you.”
“Thanks. Who are you?”
He laughed so hard the lights almost went out for good. “Oh, I have many names. There are some who call me Light. Some call me Master. I believe you would know me best by the human name—Lucifer.” Biggest red flag yet.
“Okay. What can I do for you, Lucifer?” Don’t judge me. A sale is a sale.
“I’m actually more concerned about what I can do for you. See, you may not know it, but this gas station is a crossroads. And I’ve been known to visit crossroads from time to time to offer deals to those who need them. I can help you with everything. I can heal your pain. I can make you rich. I can—”
“One moment. I just need to check your credentials.”
“Excuse me?”
I bent down and thumped the ice chest under the register. “Hey, Jerry.”
He yawned (somehow) and said, “Sorry, what did I miss? I fell asleep again.”
“How do you fall asleep?”
“How do you not?” Touché, Jerry.
“I got this guy here who’s saying he’s the literal devil. Care to weigh in?”
“Oh. Oh snap! You’re not going to believe this, Jack, but yes! He’s telling the truth! This is the honest-to-God Judeo-Christian devil!”
“Alright, that’s all I needed to know, thanks.”
The devil cleared his throat and said, “What exactly are you doing, Jack?”
I grabbed the baseball bat from behind the counter and cracked Satan across the skull. For an omnipotent super-deity, he sure went down like a bitch. He tried crawling away, but two more whacks with the bat were enough to lay him out for good. I finished my coffee before getting to work, wrapping him up in a tarp, putting him inside the designated corpse wheelbarrow, and taking him out back to the grave site. I could have him underground in less than an hour, if I could just find a damned spot that wasn’t already taken.
I guess I need to start digging deeper.